On March 4th, Sinhala Buddhist mobs began sweeping through Sri Lanka’s Kandy district, hurling petrol bombs at Muslim-owned houses, shops and mosques. The attacks came as a shock, as Sri Lanka has not seen violence on this scale in nearly a decade. The government deployed thousands of security forces, armed with automatic weapons, tear gas and water cannons, but they failed to stop the violence until four days later. By then, mobs had wreaked havoc in a dozen towns and destroyed 465 properties. Yet the death toll was astonishingly low: The mobs ultimately killed just one person.

What accounts for the disparity? Dozens of ordinary civilians and local leaders used a variety of innovative strategies to protect one another and prevent violence from escalating.

Paradise in tears

During Sri Lanka’s 26-year-long civil war, which ended in 2009, it was often referred to as “paradise in tears.” With pristine beaches, ancient Buddhist temples and diverse wildlife all conveniently packed into an island the size of West Virginia, the country seems like an unlikely backdrop to three decades of ethnic conflict. Since the war ended, it has become one of Asia’s top tourist destinations, but the recent violence has led many to fear that Sri Lanka could be on the brink of another war.

The situation has some parallels to Myanmar’s current Rohingya crisis: Hardliners from the majority Sinhala Buddhist population, including several monks, have engaged in a sustained propaganda campaign, using social media to spread anti-Muslim sentiments, proliferate hate speech and organize attacks. In fact, Buddhist monks organized and carried out an attack on 200 Rohingya refugees in Sri Lanka last year. But unlike in Myanmar, anti-Muslim violence is a relatively new phenomenon in Sri Lanka.

Muslims did their best to stay out of Sri Lanka’ civil war, which was fought between the Sinhala-dominated government and a separatist group from Sri Lanka’s other minority population, the Tamils. After the war ended and Tamil separatism no longer posed a threat to nationalist ideals, militant Sinhala Buddhists began to target the Muslim population instead.

Over the last five years, Sinhala Buddhist nationalists have exploited global trends in Islamophobia to bolster myths that the nine percent Muslim minority is plotting to wrest control of the country away from the Sinhala majority and transform it into an Islamic nation. Rumors suggesting that Muslims are trying to stifle Sinhala population growth have become ubiquitous. Accusations that Muslim restaurants are lacing food with pills that cause permanent infertility have motivated attacks on Muslims. They became so prevalent that the government carried out tests on the food. As it turns out, the “pills” were actually just clumps of flour. Sinhala nationalists also frequently use Muslims as a scapegoat for their economic frustrations, as Muslims have traditionally been associated with Sri Lanka’s business sector.

Yet, despite the prevalence of such divisive propaganda, most Sri Lankans have refused to resort to violence. Meanwhile, Muslims have largely responded to attacks with nonviolence.

During the recent attacks, Muslims leaders used mosque loud speakers (which are normally used for the call to prayer) to urge Muslims to remain calm and refrain from retaliating. In many areas, Sinhalese and Tamils stepped in to protect Muslims, using a variety of strategies.

Early warning

When a mob approached a neighborhood in the town of Pallekele, Sinhala Buddhist families called their Muslim neighbors to warn them.

“We were on the way back from a wedding when the attacks began, but we turned around when our neighbors called us and told us it wasn’t safe to come home,” Hassan, a Muslim father of three explained. With their home and all of their belongings destroyed by fire, the family has been subsisting almost solely on the kindness of their neighbors who bring them food and buckets of water and charge their phones for them every day.

In Kengalla, the town that sustained the most damage in the attacks, Nussair’s friend, who had personal connections to some of the organizers of the attacks, called to warn him the day before the attacks.

“We didn’t think it was really going to happen,” Nussair said. He and his son stayed in the house, but he sent his daughter and four-month-old granddaughter out of town, just in case. Nussair and his son were still in the house when the mob began attacking it, but managed to escape. “We were so scared, we ran out the back as fast as we could,” he said.

In at least one other town, ample warning allowed Muslims to evacuate before the mobs began to attack. In a WhatsApp group that was used to organize the attacks, a group member sent a message saying “when we went to attack, there was no one, they had left,” while another member said, “someone had given them the news.”

Providing safe shelter

The mobs systematically targeted Muslim homes, shops and mosques, but other buildings remained untouched. Dozens of Sinhalese and Tamils were therefore able to provide a safe haven for Muslims during the attacks. Some hotels and families even posted invitations on Twitter.

In one particularly organized effort, a Tamil priest went to each of his parishioners’ homes and asked them to provide shelter for Muslims. He then drove Muslim families to each parishioner’s home, where they remained for the next 48 hours. When they returned home, many found that their homes had been burned down, but the community’s actions allowed them to escape unscathed.

Violence interruption

In Rajawella, a Muslim-majority village, men decided they would defend their homes and their families when they heard the mob was heading their way. Fifty men and boys gathered at the village entrance, armed only with sticks and kitchen knives, and prepared to take on the mob of 300 people. When a local monk heard about the developing situation, he feared that it would end in a bloodbath. He came to the town, and stood in front of the men and boys when the mob began to approach. The mob saw him, stopped and retreated.

“The monk protected us. He was the only reason that we weren’t attacked,” said Hassan, a business leader from the community. Dozens of displaced Muslim families are now living at the town mosque, as it is one of the few in the area that remained unharmed.

Protective presence

In the town of Balagolla, the Muslim community was afraid of being attacked during Friday prayers and reached out to Ven. Thalpotha Dhammajothi Thero, a local monk, for help. In response, the monk and his welfare committee stood outside the mosque throughout the prayers to deter any perpetrators.

“When I arrived, [the Muslim leaders] invited me inside, but I told them I am here to guard the mosque”, Dhammajothi Thero said. He insisted that he stay outside so that he was visible if any attackers arrived. As the mobs were carrying out the attacks in the name of Sinhala Buddhism, he knew that they would not attack if a monk was standing in their way.

Civilians protecting civilians

These interventions were remarkable, but not unprecedented. Civilians have intervened to protect each other in previous conflicts, as well. During the holocaust, Danish communities organized to warn Jews of an imminent Nazi plan to roundup and deport them to concentration camps, and then helped them escape. During the Rwandan genocide, many Hutus saved the lives of their Tutsi neighbors by providing them with safe shelter.

In the wake of violence, the obvious response is to focus on what went wrong. But equally important is to figure out what went right. Violence is, quite literally, contagious, but so is altruism. When we see someone engage in heroic actions, we often feel inspired to take such actions. And when we help others, we feel good about ourselves and are motivated to repeat such actions in the future. By highlighting civilian peacekeeping efforts — both organic and organized — we encourage others to take similar actions in the future.

Whether it’s assault rifles, racial justice, immigration or fossil fuels, the country is rocked by conflicting narratives and rising passions. In a recent national poll, 70 percent of Americans say the political divide is at least as big as during the Vietnam War.

In December, I completed a year-and-a-half book tour in over 80 towns and cities in United States. From Arizona to Alaska to North Dakota to Georgia, I heard a worry in common from people active in struggles for justice. They talk about the political polarization they see around them.

Many assume that polarization is a barrier to making change. They observe more shouting and less listening, more drama and less reflection, and an escalation at the extremes. They note that mass media journalists have less time to cover the range of activist initiatives, which are therefore drowned out by the shouting. From coast to coast activists asked me: Does this condition leave us stuck?

My answer included both good news and bad news. Most people wanted the latter first.

The bad news about divisiveness

We are not dealing with a passing fad or temporary trend. The research of a trio of political scientists found that political polarization follows the curve of economic inequality. For decades after World War II, white male inequality in the United States was relatively low and governance was largely bi-partisan in spirit. But, as income inequality began to polarize, so too did our politics. Not surprisingly, perhaps, by 2015, income inequality was greater than at any other point in U.S. history, according to economists Jeffrey Gale Williamson and Peter Lindert.

The tax bill passed in January will add even more fuel to the fire.

Progressives need to breathe deeply and make our peace with the reality. Division expresses an economic arrangement, and it’s not something we can fix through urging more civil discourse. Even though we’ll want to use our conflict resolution skills in order to cope, we can also expect more drama at the extreme ends of our polarizations, and more ugliness and violence.

Even some of the people who carry progressive values like anti-oppression can be expected to become harsher and more dogmatic, as if inspired by the witch-hunting Massachusetts Puritans of yore. The dynamic of polarization is contagious — it doesn’t confine itself to tweeting public officials, radio talk shows and political junkies. I believe there’s little point in blaming our progressive movement comrades who pick up the infection around us. Instead, it helps to remember that this trend is much, much bigger than we are. We might as well forgive ourselves and each other, and focus on the positive openings that are given to us in this period.

The good news about polarization

In the 1920s and ‘30s, the United States and European countries polarized dramatically. In Italy and Germany, fascists were marching and communists were organizing for the dictatorship of the proletariat. Even on Europe’s northwest periphery, Sweden and Norway faced the most extreme polarization they’d ever had, complete with Nazis marching in the streets.

The outcomes of polarization for those four countries were, however, very different. In Germany and Italy, Hitler and Mussolini came to power. In Sweden and Norway democratic socialist movements pushed their economic elites off their pedestals and invented the egalitarian Nordic economic model. Saying goodbye to their old class-ridden days of poverty, Swedes and Norwegians generated historically new levels of equality, individual freedom and shared abundance.

The contrasting outcomes could not be more dramatic. All four countries experienced extreme polarization in the 1920s and ‘30s. Two fell into disaster, and two climbed out of poverty and oppression to the top tier of progressive national achievement. From these examples we can see that polarization may guarantee a big political fight, but it doesn’t determine whether the outcome will be dictatorship or democracy.

U.S. history also shows that polarization does not determine outcomes. In the United States in 1920s and ‘30s, the Ku Klux Klan was riding high as well as a growing Nazi movement. On the radical left, movements grew as well. The outcome was not fascist dictatorship, but instead Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal.” Out of that polarization came the most progressive decade of the first half of the 20th century in the United States.

Fast forward to the divided 1960s, which boiled over into the ‘70s, when environmentalists, feminists and LGBT people joined the ferment initiated by the civil rights and other movements of the ‘60s. Once again the Nazis grew along with the Ku Klux Klan, while on the left we remember the Weather Underground and the Symbionese Liberation Army. Nevertheless, in the midst of strong polarization, the United States made its greatest progress in the second half of the 20th century.

Letting the heat work for progress

While book touring in England, I stayed with a metal sculptor who showed me his blacksmith’s hearth, essential for creating the beautiful designs that filled his studio. I saw a useful metaphor: Progressives need polarization like blacksmiths and artists need heat to make cold hard metal flexible enough to change its shape.

Heat creates volatility, in metal and in society. It breaks up crystalized patterns. It makes possible something new to replace the rigid oppressive structures that express themselves through sexual and racist violence, endemic poverty alongside extreme wealth, environmental destruction, political corruption and militarism.

Since we can expect more polarization ahead, how can we use its heat and volatility to create something as serviceable as a horseshoe, or even a sculpture of beauty? We can give ourselves a head start by learning what worked in previous periods of polarization and strengthening them for our context.

Because planning is an empowering practice, I’ve organized what’s worked for others into a kind of roadmap, consisting of five stages. There is some reason to the sequence, but not enough to be rigid about it.

A roadmap to transformation

1. Tell people you meet that we are creating a plan. Acquaintances may believe you are simply “a protester” or like to hang out with your activist friends — they may not know it’s even possible to create a plan to work together to get ourselves out of this mess. According to the American Psychological Association, 63 percent of Americans say that concerns about the nation’s future are a major source of stress in their lives.

Planning is on the side of positivity, capability and empowerment. Tell people how those are showing up in your life by participating in the plan.

2. Build the infrastructure of the new society. Governmental dysfunction in the United States is becoming ever more obvious. Tourists come back with tales of wonder from Scandinavia, while people stateside see inept responses to disasters like lead poisoning and Hurricane Katrina. The Pew Research Center found that only 19 percent of Americans trust the government to do the right thing.

A century ago the Nordics also had low trust. Organizers supported them to work together through cultural groups and co-ops, empowering themselves to meet each others’ needs. Americans may be ready for this: The same Pew study found that 55 percent believe ordinary Americans would “do a better job of solving problems” than elected officials.

Make the most of this opportunity to reach “beyond the choir,” building groups and institutions with people who didn’t previously know each other. Increasing your range of connection may be easier if people know you are thoughtful about everyone.

Most Swedes and Norwegians came to realize that the economic elite ruled their countries and that their parliaments were pretend democracies. Loving efficiency, they preferred to skip the middlemen and go straight to the top, by focusing their campaigns on the owners rather than the politicians. Making this shift in the United States will help each movement to become sharper and clearer, more visionary, and — by refusing to be co-opted by a political party — more ready to align with others to build a movement of movements. They may also, as did the Nordics, stay close to the alternative infrastructure being built on a local level.

4. Gain unity among movements around a broad vision of what will replace dysfunctional and unjust institutions. Many Nordics understood that politicians’ promises of small reform steps were inadequate, even insulting — something incrementalist Hillary Clinton discovered in the 2016 U.S. election. The large majority of Americans who tell pollsters that the country is “headed in the wrong direction” increasingly match their words with their deeds and stay away from the polls.

The Nordic democratic socialists succeeded because their vision was radical, showed deep respect for the people and made sense at the same time. One example was promising universal services instead of programs for the poor.

Few people want to go with you if they don’t know where you’re going. Nordic movements grew partly because organizers explained the destination. By sharing the vision, organizers showed they respected people more than manipulative politicians. Fortunately, in the United States, the Movement for Black Lives has already offered a vision, and more are emerging. When there is vision, stronger movements may grow out of nonviolent direct action campaigns.

5. Build a movement of movements powerful enough to dislodge the 1 percent from dominance. That’s what the Swedes and Norwegians did. Movements worked together to raise the level of nonviolent struggle to that point, even though their opponents tried to repress them with violence. Movements cooperated because they saw that their individual goals were opposed by the same force — the economic elite.

This is just as true in the United States, where the aspirations of both white and black workers, women and sexual minorities, immigrants and activists for climate justice, students and gun reform activists are all frustrated by the 1 percent. Cooperation for deep struggle becomes more likely when we create a vision in common that speaks to diverse interests.

So, where are we with this roadmap? The good news is that people are hard at work on the second and third steps already. As we gain confidence, we’ll tackle the fourth as well, which will increase our credibility and invite the gain in numbers that makes the fifth possible.

What about polarization?

I lived in Norway 25 years after the struggle that resulted in a power shift. I observed a remarkably peaceful society with a high degree of consensus. The whole political spectrum had shifted significantly to the left — the politics of the Norwegian right-wing was to the left of America’s Democratic Party. The overall direction of the economy was decided by the people as a whole. They enjoyed lively debates about the issues of the day, confident that the majority’s decisions would be carried out without corruption. And they hoped some day, without spending much money on it, to win a lot of Olympic medals.

Three decades after the People Power revolution ended the bloody regime of Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, Asia’s oldest republic is at a crossroads. Since Rodrigo Duterte became president of the Philippines in June 2016, he has led an extrajudicial killing campaign that has taken over 12,000 lives. Officially cloaked as an anti-crime policy, his “war against drugs” has nevertheless failed to address the genuine roots of the country’s narcotics crisis. It has instead only worsened the situation by victimizing the urban poor at a staggering rate.

In recent months, there has also been a particularly bloody escalation of hostility against the progressive movement under his regime. Over a dozen activists from left-wing groups were executed in December, among them religious leaders and indigenous farmers from the south of the country in Mindanao. The island has been under martial law for nine months, due to the war between government forces and jihadist militants in the city of Marawi, which ended in October. Duterte’s congressional and judicial allies did not hesitate to extend military rule in the region despite the actual absence of rebellion.

Moreover, Duterte’s order to declare the Communist Party of the Philippines, or CPP, and its armed wing, the New People’s Army, terrorist organizations has created more incentives for the military to accelerate its aggressions against the militant left. This has provided a pretext to oppress the CPP’s affiliates on the legal front, a development that has already occurred in recent weeks, when the president publicly vowed to extend his crackdown against these organizations.

Yet the government’s increasingly authoritarian tactics are a symptom of its lack of popular support. By targeting the country’s “undesirables” first, he may have provided a useful pretext for today’s broader repression, but the campaign’s brutality has also helped crystallize opposition to his government.

This opposition was on full display during the last week of February, with the nationwide commemoration of the People Power revolt that was celebrated through protests against Duterte’s tyrannical policies. The youth-led demonstrations were one notable event that demonstrated a growing trend of radicalization among the young generation. Considering Duterte’s crackdown is now encompassing dissenting voices from schools and universities, this is a welcome development since it is more important than ever to empower and organize the youth.

The force of this maturing resistance began to blossom last fall when Filipinos all over the country took to the streets to mark the 45th anniversary of Marcos’ declaration of martial law. The “National Day of Protest” on Sept. 21 didn’t just memorialize the suffering that occurred under the Marcos dictatorship. It provided an opportunity for the opposition to flex its popular support against the government. Those who came to speak out against the regime vastly outnumbered Duterte’s supporters.

These oppositional forces represented a broad and popular force in the making. It further proved that even though Duterte has the tools of a repressive state at his disposal, he cannot count on a mass base to come to his defense.

Regrouping the opposition

One of the major formations that surfaced was the Movement Against Tyranny, led by the traditional militant left, the National Democrats, under the Maoist umbrella of the CPP. The CPP allied with Duterte at the beginning of his term, but this coalition became strained as the president neglected to support their comrades in cabinet appointment hearings. Renewed popular outrage gave them a chance to distance themselves from Duterte through the late-August launch of the Movement Against Tyranny. However, they only “officially” severed parliamentary ties weeks later after an ally at the Department of Agrarian Reform was rejected. Such a broad coalition might not have even come into being had their cabinet appointments been approved.

Indeed one of the greatest sins ever committed by the militant left was giving Duterte the benefit of the doubt, despite the signs that his government’s policies — backed by demagogic rhetoric and authoritarian methods — would only prolong a neoliberal economy and marginalize the masses even further. Duterte’s candidacy served as a litmus test for the National Democrats’ commitment to progressive principles — one that they failed.

Another major political force is Tindig Pilipinas, or “Rise Up Philippines,” launched a few days before the National Day of Protest. It’s a broad coalition that includes minority blocs from congress; figures from the previous Liberal Party establishment; the social democratic party Akbayan, which coalesced with the liberals in the previous administration of Benigno Aquino; and the nationalist, anti-communist Magdalo group, composed of former junior officers of the armed forces led by Antonio Trillanes, Duterte’s most vocal critic in the senate and a former military man who staged a few failed coups against the presidency of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo during the 2000s.

When it comes to the influence of leftist parties in Philippine parliamentary politics, Akbayan has the second largest base of support after the National Democrats. Akbayan’s rise was made possible by groups that broke away from the traditional militant left in the 1990s, a decade defined by left-wing setbacks, as the largest mass formation of the militant left fragmented into multiple blocs.

Since then, the party has had some success in getting people elected in both houses of congress and eventually became one of the leading voices behind progressive legislation. However, its social democratic values were called into question when it failed to take a more critical stance against the Aquino administration in its later years when issues of accountability came up, which ultimately led to the rise of Duterte. Akbayan eventually became the liberals’ grassroots wing during the 2016 elections, when it decided to back the Liberal Party frontrunner and Aquino’s designated successor.

The rise of a resurgent alternative

Fortunately for the country’s vibrant democracy, the Philippines’ diverse progressive movement includes various independent organizations. As with the social democrats, most of them were derived from breakaway organizations that resulted from the 1990s split. But unlike Akbayan, their success in recent elections have been almost non-existent, effectively sidelining them from the national political scene.

But this may change with the new creation of Laban ng Masa, or “Struggle of the Masses,” the third oppositional force encompassing a coalition of socialist-oriented groups who have been consistent in their opposition to Duterte’s presidency from the beginning.

The coalition’s leader is activist-academic Walden Bello, who in 2016 ran an unsuccessful independent senate campaign supported by many of the same groups that now make up Laban ng Masa. By running outside the sponsorship of the National Democrats and Akbayan, Bello sought to build a campaign without corporate backing or relying on patronage politics.

Laban ng Masa is the only bloc among the three that is openly positioning itself as a left-wing alternative. In his speech, at its first general assembly, Bello emphasized the movement’s socialist vision of realizing a system of radical democracy and equality — a future beyond capitalism that’s worth fighting for.

There is no doubt that this alliance retains the moral high ground among the three. Yet it lacks the political capital and resources of the left-liberal factions making up Tindig Pilipinas and the mass base of the Movement Against Tyranny, whose backing by the militant left makes it part of the country’s largest organized left-wing coalition. From this position, the National Democrats are confident in their ability to control the narrative. After all, the CPP has been waging an armed struggle against the Philippine state for almost half a century, which makes it Asia’s longest running communist insurgency. Despite their dogmatic ideology stuck in Cold War-era rhetoric, they continue to mobilize mass support thanks to their grassroots fronts and sub-organizations, which refrain from actively promoting the armed struggle and primarily utilize nonviolent tactics.

A tactical alliance between these oppositional blocs would lead to a New Left in the Philippines. Its likelihood and character rests on the choices each force makes in the coming months. Long-term issues that touch on ideological boundaries need to be discussed intensively, especially on the part of the National Democrats. But surely, given their willingness to ally with an authoritarian strongman like Duterte, they should be inclined to show the same favor towards other groups. If they don’t, they will be unable to radically shape a new political order.

The need for a unified project

The lack of solidarity among left-wing groups has plagued the country for decades. A fresh reformist project must reaffirm the importance of progressive pluralism.

For this project to be successful, the National Democrats need to take ownership for their past transgressions, in particular their continuing refusal to genuinely acknowledge their complicity and insist that their alliance with Duterte was a critical engagement in “principled unity and struggle,” a courtesy that was never extended to any previous president.

Opposition forces must also wrestle with whether to call for Duterte’s ouster. Simply ousting the president will not address the structural problems that led to his rise. Even progressive activists who support ousting him, like Laban ng Masa’s Herbert Docena, recognize that only through a broad and unified mass movement can an actual alternative emerge.

Plus, considering Duterte’s durable popularity among many Filipinos, particularly from the middle and upper middle classes, such an action would deepen the divide among the populace and pave a fresh path towards another strongman citing the “golden age” of Marcos.

As for Tindig Pilipinas, the group’s social democratic forces have yet to account for its association with the previous government and have so far shown no concrete plan for how to fix the country without going back to the failed elite-dominated democracy that led to Duterte’s surge.

So far, they have also hesitated on calling for the president’s ouster, and instead focused on vague goals like appealing to the government to take a “healing approach” to the drug war, which assumes that the country’s institutions are capable of change without reforming them from the ground up.

Indeed, using the law to resist authoritarian abuse of power is essential, and resisting Duterte’s dictatorial tendencies through the courts is something that needs to be taken advantage of. But the struggle through administrative entities or legal battles can only triumph if they are reinforced by collective action.

And that is more needed than ever, since Duterte is slowly stepping up his game in railroading constitutional bodies as part of his blueprint of reforming the country’s political system.

Struggling against Dutertismo and Marcos’ legacy

After toppling the Marcos dictatorship, Filipinos have witnessed the gradual return of the Marcos family into politics. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.’s 2010 senate victory was bad enough. Worse still was his near success in capturing the vice presidency in 2016.

Bongbong’s bid for vice president was barely defeated by the liberal frontrunner. Yet he still succeeded in tarnishing the legacy of People Power. Duterte, despite having a different running mate, continuously acted as an apologist and sponsor to the family while on the campaign trail. The support was of course mutual.

As a token of gratitude, in November 2016, Duterte green-lighted a highly controversial hero’s burial for the former tyrant, an issue that has divided the nation since the revolution and a subject that the Marcos dynasty has pushed for since their return to the country.

By putting the despot on a pedestal, Duterte catalyzed the first major protest wave against his presidency, less than five months after taking office. The anti-Marcos protests gathered various civil society organizations, such as the #BlockMarcos movement, to form an alliance not only against the Marcos burial but also as a stepping stone towards a more organized opposition against the presidency, which culminated last fall.

Now on the defensive, Duterte is trying to revive the strategy that brought him to power: using radical rhetoric to enlist popular support for his authoritarian agenda. In this effort, he has called for the establishment of a “revolutionary” government to “hasten change.”

It’s not the first time that Duterte has tried to launch a kind of “people’s movement” akin to that of the National Democrats. In 2016, his cabinet secretary Jun Evasco, a former member of the CPP, formed but failed to develop the Kilusang Pagbabago, or “Movement for Change,” which aimed to build an insurgent group similar to Marcos’ New Society Movement, a right-wing vehicle for “liberating” the Filipino people that conveniently required the declaration of martial law.

In reality, Duterte’s “revolutionary” program consists of constitutional reform meant to consolidate the administration’s power, restrain key political institutions and legalized intimidation of dissident groups. His call for a federalist system of government has been seen as a mere maneuver to extend his term as president.

This program has not inspired widespread support. When government allies called for mass demonstrations last November, they expected to rival the September protests in size and force. Instead, they flopped, particularly in Manila where they peaked at a few thousand, far below their expectations of a few hundred thousand people. The mobilization showed that the government has failed to develop a critical mass to counter the rising opposition. Duterte has online trolls at his disposal, but not a grassroots movement capable of mobilizing aggressive demonstrations.

Resisting Rodrigo’s “revolution from above”

The spectacle of the failed “Revolutionary Government” rallies proved that Duterte’s appropriation of anti-establishment rhetoric cannot hold up under the reality of his regime. But that didn’t stop him from taking advantage of his allies in the legislature. The Philippine Congress has now taken the lead and decided to form a constituent assembly to reform the constitution.

Indeed, the current situation poses both opportunities and challenges. The next task for such a united front is to maintain the momentum that arose from the September rallies and the subsequent mass actions. Because if the progressive movement in the Philippines is to have a future, it will depend on its willingness to forge more strategic alliances.

The shift among the traditional militant left, away from Duterte’s government and towards coalition with a broad opposition, may be a step in the right direction. They must begin to recognize the reality of the plurality of the country’s grassroots movements. Ignoring the struggles of those who have staunchly and consistently fought and resisted Duterte’s brutal regime from the start will not help the cause for a better future.

Unless the National Democrats’ sectarian factions acknowledge that there is no future for a doctrinaire left, they will continue to pave their own path towards long-lasting marginalization. They should start realizing the impossibility of winning the armed struggle and that only through a veritable multi-sectoral political struggle can they solidify a true united front towards radical change.

As for the social democratic left, a fundamental step is to essentially distance themselves from the reactionary forces that constitute Tindig Pilipinas and rebuild their party by re-embracing the very principles that accompanied its foundation. Moreover, they must overcome the temptations to reinstate the elite democracy that blossomed following the Marcos era and instead join the broader left in advocating for its radical reform.

Unfortunately for the socialist forces comprising Laban ng Masa, building a huge mass base with their current resources remains an unlikely prospect, unless they lead the call towards building this unified project while sticking to their radical principles. This will not be an easy task, but if these emergent forces truly desire to deepen democracy in the country, they will need to come together and build a more formidable coalition.

Such an undertaking must resist Duterte’s creeping dictatorship, where violence and capital continue to reign supreme, while fighting for true democratic reforms based on social justice and equality. This is the true ongoing struggle of the masses — a struggle for a more genuine progressive alternative that is worth fighting for.

]]>https://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/united-resistance-duterte-philippines/feed/0https://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/united-resistance-duterte-philippines/Inside the grassroots plan to get fossil fuel money out of politicshttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WagingNonviolence/~3/PAL1VwI_obA/
https://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/inside-climate-movement-no-fossil-fuel-money-pledge/#respondMon, 12 Mar 2018 17:34:48 +0000https://wagingnonviolence.org/?post_type=feature&p=45601by Will Lawrence

The No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge reflects a new hunger within the climate movement to directly challenge the power of Big Oil in the electoral arena.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, candidate for Congress in New York’s 14th district, after signing the No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge last year. (Twitter / No Fossil Fuel Money)

If there’s hope for addressing climate change in the wake of Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement and ongoing hollowing-out of the EPA, it might be found in a little-noticed vote in Virginia’s House of Delegates last month.

On February 12, the House voted on a provision to limit the powers of utility monopoly Dominion Energy, the largest political donor in the state. To the surprise of all present, Dominion lost the vote by a slim margin. While the ultimate policy ramifications are uncertain — since the bill is still working its way through the legislative process — observers saw it as a sea change.

“I’ve never seen Dominion lobbyists look so sad,” a senior Democratic aide told the Huffington Post. “This is the first time I’ve ever seen Dominion lose on the floor. This is a game changer.”

Dominion’s opponents — including grassroots groups Clean Virginia, Activate Virginia and others — have been building toward this breakthrough for at least a year. Before they could defeat Dominion on the House floor in 2018, they had to first defeat them at the ballot box in 2017. That year, 85 candidates for the House signed Activate Virginia’s pledge to refuse donations from Dominion, and 13 of them ended up winning their races.

Among those 13 delegates were Democratic Socialist Lee Carter, first-ever transgender delegate Danica Roem and recent State of the Union Spanish-language responder Elizabeth Guzman. Each helped lead the charge to oppose Dominion and are continuing their fight as the bill progresses.

Of all progressive issues, climate and energy policy may be the most suited to empty promises from political candidates. Climate-concerned voters have endured decades of disregard from candidates for office. While Republican mockery is bad enough, even more galling is the tendency of Democrats to go completely silent on climate change in high-profile moments like Joe Kennedy’s response to Trump’s State of the Union.

Years of derision and neglect have resulted in a climate activist base that is hungry for political validation, but ill-prepared to distinguish serious allies from frauds. Witness the widespread grassroots support for the “Climate Solutions Caucus,” a bipartisan group in Congress that has offered few solutions and whose GOP members voted for the Arctic-drilling tax bill. While thousands of activists around the country are single-mindedly focused on lobbying representatives to join the caucus, others see it as little more than a PR gambit. RL Miller of the political action committee Climate Hawks Vote told ThinkProgress, “Other than sending out press releases regarding who’s joining, they’re not doing anything.”

In comparison to the seemingly empty gesture of joining the Climate Solutions Caucus, the early results in Virginia suggest that elected officials at all levels of government — unbought by fossil fuel companies — are more likely to take meaningful stands against their climate-destroying, monopolistic agenda. This bodes well for a national coalition of climate organizations that are taking Activate Virginia’s model to states around the country with a No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge. Launched in June 2017, the pledge asks all candidates for office to “not take contributions from the oil, gas and coal industry and instead prioritize the health of our families, climate and democracy over fossil fuel industry profits.”

For a grassroots climate movement that spent the Obama years largely disengaged from the task of winning or influencing elections, the No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge reflects a new hunger to directly challenge the power of Big Oil in the electoral arena. Having substantially won the public debate about the threat of climate change, organizers now aim to translate public support for climate action into real political power.

Not a moment too soon

The latest scientific data, as well as the weather outside our windows, reveal a global climate system on life support. Emergency action is needed, soon, and that means we all must demand more from our political leaders.

As one Puerto Rican who suffered through Hurricane Maria recently told the Center for Investigative Reporting, “We didn’t just lose the facilities … We lost our dream. We lost the future of our children. We lost belief in the government, trust in everything … My house was filled with sewage. I slept in a garage. How do I explain that to my daughters?”

This woman, now displaced to New York City, is one of the United States’ first climate migrants. She’s not alone. 2017 may be remembered as the year when climate change showed its face to the American people, and the cruel diversity of ways it can harm became evident. Hurricane Harvey’s winds were comparatively mild next to Maria’s, but the storm practically took up residence in Houston, barely budging for five days as it unloaded more water than any storm in U.S. history. More than four months later, 10,000 families remain in temporary housing, and risk losing even that if FEMA fails to renew its assistance funding. Meanwhile, Hurricane Irma, the most powerful storm ever recorded in the Atlantic, avoided the feared direct hit on Miami or Tampa, and ended up as “only” the third-costliest hurricane in American history.

As the winds of change whipped up storm surges in the Southeast, they fanned fires in the West. The Tubbs Fire, which damaged or destroyed more than 5,600 homes and killed 22 in October, was the most destructive of the more than 9,000 wildfires in California in 2017. The biggest one, called the Thomas Fire, encompassed an area larger than the D.C. Beltway. Like others in Puerto Rico, Houston and Florida, fire-weary Californians are questioning if they should rebuild or retreat in the face of what many called the “new normal.”

If only it were actually the new normal. As journalist David Wallace-Wells has noted, “the truth is actually far scarier.” This is our world at roughly 1 degree Celsius of warming, and scientific estimates project that we are headed for at least 3 or 4 degrees total, meaning that the current floods and fires are only a fraction of what is on the way. Even at 2 degrees — the internationally agreed-upon limit, which at this point looks like a best-case scenario — Miami, New Orleans, most of Boston and parts of every other coastal city will be permanently evacuated before rising seas. Meanwhile, the amount of land in the Western United States consumed by wildfires will increase by at least four times over current rates.

As always, when discussing climate change, the impacts will be most pronounced in the Global South. Southern nations’ representatives to the United Nations have repeatedly referred to 2 degrees as a “death sentence.” And it’s not hard to see why: At such a temperature increase, the once-in-a-generation Indian heat wave that killed over 2,500 in 2015 will be an average summer. Fifty million Bangladeshis will have to flee as the rising Ganges River Delta drowns their homeland — a figure that dwarfs the current estimate of three million people displaced in the Syrian refugee crisis.

The cause of all this chaos

Coal, oil and natural gas account for over 80 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. That’s why to avoid catastrophe, scientists say we must cut carbon emissions from fossil fuel to zero before 2040.

Fossil fuel corporations — ranging from regional utilities like Dominion to the large international outfits that extract most of the Earth’s fuel — would have us believe they are undergoing a climate-awareness renaissance. Darren Woods, who succeeded Rex Tillerson as the head of ExxonMobil, has said, “I believe, and my company believes, that climate risks warrant action and it’s going to take all of us … to make meaningful progress.” At the same time, a recent Exxon ad depicts a young and energetic cast of characters holding beakers and touting biofuels research. Meanwhile, Shell recently ran a spot highlighting solar energy entrepreneurs in Nigeria, and BP declared that the “human spirit is the most powerful energy of all.”

In truth, Big Oil’s investments in renewable energy are minimal, though if the human spirit were combustible they would surely extract it and sell it back to us at a mark-up. The current blitz is only the latest stage in a decades-long PR campaign, expertly crafted to protect corporate profits in the face of an existential threat to their business model.

Recent reporting has revealed that the world’s largest fossil fuel companies — including ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, ConocoPhillips, Shell and others — understood the threat of climate change as far back as the 1970s, long before it came to public attention, and chose to bury that information in favor of profit.

By lying to shareholders and the public about an imminent threat to civilization as we know it, a very small group of oil executives committed what the Pulitzer-prize winning InsideClimate News described as “a crime of historic proportions” and got filthy rich in the process — Rex Tillerson took home $300 million during his time at ExxonMobil.

Yet, stifling science was only one plank of their strategy. By the mid-2000s, fossil fuel barons had begun a systematic plan to purchase politicians through the legalized bribery of campaign donations. To this day, the ringleaders in this effort are Charles and David Koch, the brothers whose bedrock business is moving oil and gas through a nationwide network of refineries and pipelines. Their combined net worth of $86 billion puts in perspective the $750 million their network spent on the 2016 election cycle.

By funding attack ads and primary opponents running against Republicans who espoused climate action, the Kochs and allies made climate denial a litmus test for all Republican candidates. Those who wanted to get elected ignominiously reversed their prior positions to become born-again deniers, none more conspicuously than Donald Trump, who as recently as 2009 signed a letter calling for Congress to “reduce the harmful emissions that are putting our planet at risk.”

While Republicans have been the main recipient of Big Oil’s largesse, Democrats have gotten in on the action too. Mother Jones reported that “nearly all” of Hillary Clinton’s lobbyist fundraisers had worked at one time or another for the fossil fuel industry. In the 2016 election cycle, 93 percent of direct fossil fuel contributions in Congressional races went to Republicans — but the 7 percent still totaled nearly $4 million, spread among 146 Democrats.

The coming ‘blue wave’

Directly appealing to Exxon and other fossil fuel companies to change their position is likely a dead end. But we do live in a country where our representatives are sworn to uphold the Constitution and pursue the ideals set out in the Declaration of Independence — the right to life foremost among them. It has never been clearer that collaborating with Big Oil irrevocably compromises this oath.

The record shows an industry that is irreparably rotten at the very top, whose leaders have recklessly endangered billions of lives for the sake of expanding already unfathomable fortunes. These men — and they are, almost exclusively, men — have enough money to support their families for generations, and yet they have systematically threatened the lives of every family on the planet who has less than them.

Based on early polling and special election results, many observers anticipate a “blue wave” of Democratic victories in 2018. This wave offers an opportunity to clean up the oil-soaked corridors of Washington, but only if it doesn’t arrive already covered in oil. Recall, it may be particularly difficult for climate advocates to distinguish friend from pretender, given that the bar has been set so low. We can’t afford to fall head-over-heels for any candidate who admits that climate change is real and gives it some airtime. And, given that the fossil fuel executives are looking at the same poll data as the rest of us, we can expect them to increase donations to Democrats in this wave year.

Considering this challenge, the No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge holds appeal as a mechanism for sorting out the candidates who will ultimately fall in line behind the Exxon- and Dominion-funded conventional wisdom, and those who will be outspoken and unbought champions for swift and comprehensive action. Seeing the potential, a coalition of 16 groups has begun collaborating to push the pledge nationwide in 2018. (Full disclosure: I am an active member of Sunrise Movement, one of the involved groups.)

In California, the pledge is well on its way to becoming a fixture in state politics. R.L. Miller of Climate Hawks Vote played a major role by encouraging a bit of showmanship. “I came up with the idea of blowing up the pledge onto a big foam core board, and having candidates sign it in front of cheering activists at the California Democratic Party convention,” Miller said. “It’s become such a signature of the environmental caucus that candidates bring their staffers to livestream them signing it with a flourish.”

Early experiments of this sort in California, Virginia and Massachusetts were essential to lay groundwork for the current coalition. “After these state campaigns started gaining momentum and attention from national campaigns we began comparing notes and coordinating efforts to build a more cohesive national push that would help to scale up the success that we were seeing at the state level,” said Brant Olson, campaign director at ClimateTruth.org.

The national effort has already scored a few high-profile successes, including Paul Ryan challengers Randy Bryce and Cathy Myers. And on January 31, Bernie Sanders committed to the pledge during a live-streamed event in Washington, D.C. The ensuring surge of local and state-level candidates, inspired by Sanders, has pushed the total number of pledge-takers from just under 200 to 233, as of this writing. Activists in the No Fossil Fuel Money coalition hope to surpass 1,000 pledge signers by November 2018.

Perhaps not surprisingly, early experience suggests that outsider candidates are much more likely to swear off fossil fuel cash. When asked how candidates coming through the official Democratic Party recruitment pipeline responded to the pledge, Josh Stanfield of Activate Virginia said, “They never responded to our question. They just ignored it. A couple of them have since accepted contributions from Dominion or its executives.” Meanwhile, candidates outside the pipeline “weren’t aware of the party line requiring deference to Dominion.” These are the candidates who are now leading the resistance to Dominion within the halls of power.

Given this dynamic, activists are planning to pursue a two-front strategy: sign up hundreds of progressive candidates to the pledge with little effort, and pick a few high-profile fights with “establishment” Democrats to challenge the national party on its compromised climate position. Sara Blazevic of Sunrise NYC identified New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo as one such target.

“Cuomo paints himself as a leader on climate change,” she said. “But he’s let the most ambitious climate legislation in the country flounder in the state legislature. New Yorkers deserve better than a politician who takes money from corporations in exchange for corrupt bargains cut with fake Democrats and the party of Trump. He can’t call himself a climate leader while taking money from the oil, coal and gas companies threatening our state.”

The day when government is answerable to the people

By building momentum through local, state and congressional races, advocates say they ultimately hope to lay the groundwork this year for a much higher-profile showdown over fossil fuel money and climate policy in the 2020 presidential primary.

After the failure of the Copenhagen climate talks and Waxman-Markey climate legislation in 2009, the U.S. climate movement spent several years floundering in search of direction and vigor. In the absence of direction from many national organizations, community members on the fencelines and frontlines of fossil fuel infrastructure nurtured a more confrontational approach, which gained strength by openly naming the fossil fuel industry as the enemy. This view found mainstream expression in an 2012 article by Bill McKibben, called “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math.” In calling for mass divestment from fossil fuel stocks, McKibben wrote, “We need to view the fossil-fuel industry in a new light. It has become a rogue industry, reckless like no other force on Earth. It is Public Enemy Number One to the survival of our planetary civilization.”

Divestment was considered impossible at that time. Many of the necessary financial instruments didn’t exist, oil companies were considered wildly profitable, and institutional resistance was strong. But the moral truth of the argument resonated across the world, and a movement was born. Today, institutions representing $5 trillion worldwide have divested from oil, gas and coal.

To advocates who have been involved with both efforts, the No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge represents the extension of divestment’s logic into the political sphere. If fossil fuels are Public Enemy Number One, it is simply immoral to accept their money. And if the pledge catches fire in the same manner as divestment, it’s not unreasonable to imagine January 20, 2021 as the day when Congress and the president are answerable to the people, not the fossil fuel billionaires. Then, and only then, will political action at the scale of the climate crisis begin.

Research for this article was contributed by Aru Shiney-Ajay and Jonathan Guy.

Exhausted personally and politically by the current state of the world? Or just need a distraction — something to lighten up the remaining days of winter? Here’s a recommendation: Play board games! I’m not talking about Risk or Chutes & Ladders — even though they can be fun. I want to make a pitch for exploring the rather broad category of resistance-inspired gaming.

There’s a long and fabulous history of both learning and fun in these games of resistance. Several started as educational tools to teach about political, social or economic realities. Others have been designed to offer practice at taking on and overcoming a problematic system.

Ultimately, these games are a great way to inject some playfulness into a training or bring creativity into your strategic planning. Gameplay can be a low-risk (and less stressful) way to start planning for a new campaign or to exercise your team’s collective muscle without being browbeaten into it.

The following list of resistance games encompass a wide variety of styles — from cooperative to roleplaying to standard around-the-board gameplay. And each one has its own personality. Some will draw out your inner Gandhi, some will let you live your wildest fantasies of insurrection, and some will just make you laugh. So dive in and get your game on!

Rise Up! Game of People & Power

The newest game, clocking in at just over a year old, is the fruit of the TESA games crew, otherwise known as the Toolbox for Education and Social Action. In Rise Up! Game of People & Power, all players are on the same team, running different parts of a movement struggling to beat “The System.” To start, pick an issue or focus story to work on: It could be something realistic like a government anti-corruption campaign, or something imaginary like “justice for baby dragons.” Everyone wins, or loses, together. The game develops tension as “The System” fights back when players draw a System card after each turn — delivering arrests, infighting, infiltration, surveillance and other impediments large and small.

Do play this if you want to explore the trials and tribulations of organizers and activists working together on a campaign that you create. Coming up with your campaign (or focus story) together is a great entry point for non-organizers or new activists to immediately engage in the play. It is also a key way to address the big challenge of educational games: how to make them actually fun to play, as opposed to just a powerful training tool or exercise.

Rise Up! runs well with five players, or can be played with a minimum of two (but that isn’t as much fun). Set aside an hour to an hour and a half. Young and old can strategize together, pondering whether it’s more important to add members or reach a new constituency, organize on the internet or work with media. Just watch out — you might end up in some real world arguments about the most effective tactical choices. Also, if you end up in jail, or the hospital, the game could end without you getting released. That’s why I’d recommend adding a rule that says winning is not possible unless everyone is home from the clink or the hospital. A big plus, however, is that the set includes two game boards, one for standard play and one that’s more simplified.

Rise Up! gets extra points for its ethical production standards, having been produced almost entirely by worker cooperatives in the United States, with environmentally-friendly materials.

Co-opoly, The Game of Cooperatives

Co-opoly, The Game of Cooperatives, follows in direct lineage from the seminal Monopoly, which was originally called The Landlord’s Game. Designed by Elizabeth Magie in 1902, The Landlord’s Game sought to teach about the dangers of massive accumulation of wealth by a few landowners — and present an alternative that kept the economic value of land and natural resources for the benefit of all. Similarly, Co-opoly turns the unique circumstances of starting and running a cooperative and democratic business into a fun and easy game to play.

In Co-opoly, you win when you have accumulated enough resources to start another co-op. You lose if you can’t pay your bills or continue to run your business. Decisions about pay scales, investments, insurance coverage and price setting are all on the table. These decisions are made by the players together, as everyone is on the same team as part of the same co-op. More challenges are embedded in the game through mini charades, drawing contests and fun bits that bring out a wide spectrum of skills (or lack thereof, somewhat hilariously) in your fellow employees.

Play this game with three to six folks (the more the merrier), and cooperate to build up the co-op’s resources — since everyone wins or loses together. Allow at least an hour and a half to get all the way around the board once, and more if you are set on succeeding in starting a new co-op. Players are given model personas to frame their participation in the tasks and challenges presented, as they travel the path of cooperative business life. If members complete challenges then everyone benefits — a clear way to learn about issues of solidarity and democracy within a cooperative economy.

Co-opoly also gets plenty of points for ethical production, with a majority of components produced by cooperatives and printed on recycled paper.

Lotus Dimension

Play Lotus Dimension if you are in dire need of some magical superpowers to fight a rigged game, or need to drop some karmic baggage. In the not-too-distant future of 2088, planet Earth is controlled by faceless mega-corporations that wield artificial intelligence, automation and substances to control a general public living under an “anesthetized consumer haze.” Resistance has been viciously and mostly snuffed out, but rumors abound about the existence of “The Nobles” (the group responsible for the last failed revolt in the 2050s.) As a player, you are on the path to join this motley, eccentric, and super-powered Noble crew on a quest to “awaken the complacent masses and defy the evil forces corrupting both society and spirit.”

Lotus Dimension is a tabletop role-playing game, or RPG, that would be familiar to fans of other RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons. All RPGs are built on a foundation of storytelling and quests (problem-solving challenges) governed by elements of chance (often through the use of dice). Unlike the other RPGs, however, Lotus Dimension players must solve conflicts without using violence in order to be successful. It is worth noting, however, that the game acknowledges free will and therefore violent solutions can be chosen, but at a great cost to the players. D & D players have an adage, “If you can’t kill it, get creative.” In Lotus Dimension, you skip the first part and go right to thinking about what other solutions are possible — replacing violence and weaponry with empathy and ingenuity. In order to do well, players need to shift away from a combative mentality to open up alternative winning pathways.

Players choose their own characters, which fall into several “eccentric modern day archetypes”: Artist, Monk, Illusionist, Journalist, Hacker, Mystic, Free-Runner or Shaman. Within the provided template, players build out their backstory, select resistance skills and tools, and identify notable personal traits. A “Guru Guide” creates and describes the world and the flow of the game for the Nobles. Outcomes of dangerous quests are determined by dice rolls and input from the Guru. Together, Nobles use the brainstorming of collaborative tactics — rooted in the principles of nonviolence and the Buddhist Noble Eightfold Path — to overcome obstacles, achieve objectives and defeat the “Dark Side.” All this must happen while trying to cause as little harm and suffering as possible.

In short, as the designer Scott Wayne Indiana says, “Lotus Dimension isn’t like many other RPGs. It’s both a throwback to storytelling forms about idealistic righteousness and a postmodern questioning of assumptions about the utility of violence … In this game, as in life, every problem has myriad possible solutions … Using creativity, collaboration, compassion (and maybe a little dash of crazy) will open new paths forward.”

As with most RPGs, allow plenty of time to get into character and develop a comfort level with inventive storytelling in order to get the most out of Lotus Dimension. It is recommended for three to five players, age 12 and older, due to violence in some of the scenarios — though that would not be an issue for many kids today. Of all the games reviewed here, it is the one best suited to become an engrossing hobby for the right players, rather than a one-off evening adventure. Another plus: Lotus Dimension can be purchased online as downloadable PDFs. All you need is an eight-sided die to start playing right away.

Bloc by Bloc: The Insurrection Game

Where Lotus Dimension actively rewards nonviolent resistance and creative ingenuity, Bloc by Bloc is focused on gamifying “21st century urban insurrection.” Solidly rooted in the rote tactics of occupation, looting, blockading and fighting the police, players are to imagine themselves as part of a “vibrant popular rebellion struggling to liberate a city.” And imagine they must, since there is no discussion of what makes the rebellion either vibrant or popular.

Still, you’ll enjoy this game if you have yearned for a way to explore participating in building blockades, looting stores and fighting back against riot cops after dark without real consequences (other than police counterattacks and repression during the sunrise/daylight portion of the game). That being said, you’ll need to get a handle on the many rules that govern faction movements, occupations and police operations, as the sunset insurrection turns to the sunrise police counterattack phase. (For a game developed to explore insurrections, there sure are a lot of rules!)

In order to win, you must meet the end game conditions — such as establishing a certain number of occupations in the city or defeating the authorities in the Blocs — by the eighth night, or round, of the game. If that doesn’t happen, the military steps in and crushes the remaining insurrection.

Bloc by Bloc has a few creative play elements that expands its shelf life and keeps things interesting. For example, every time you play you create a new and unique game board through a random generation of city bloc layouts. The game can also be run semi-cooperatively or fully cooperatively. Players can also have sectarian or nihilistic secret agendas with asymmetric abilities, thereby enabling them to leave their fellow insurrectionary factions in the dust. The guide contains 10 mini-expansion scenarios that offer variations on existing strategies — with titles like “Routine Traffic Stop,” “Let the Infighting Begin” and “Burn Down the Company Town.” If you are already someone experienced with uprisings, these scenarios could trigger your PTSD!

The game board, cards and tokens are colorfully playful with cheerful graphics, somewhat contrasting with the game play content itself. There are a gazillion pieces of wood and hardboard tokens, along with eight plastic die to manage. All are nice to look at, but challenging to manipulate. Then again, if you are interested in running an occupation, logistics and stuff management is a big part of that.

The fact that this game exists outside of reality — in that there is no having to say sorry for destroying community resources or infrastructure, no one getting wounded or killed, no responsibilities attached to liberating a city bloc — certainly adds to the fun factor of fighting back with impunity.

Even activists who are ardently opposed to property destruction might be able to suspend philosophical principles enough to get something out of playing the game. Likely, the simplistic logistical moves that drive most of the play will only serve to emphasize why strategic thinking adds up to more than simply deciding which barricade to place where or what store to burn down. In other words, Bloc by Bloc would not be your go-to-game to advocate “urban uprisings” as a winning strategy.

Class Struggle

Class Struggle is a somewhat legendary example of the lineage of illustrious educational games. Being neither big on unique game process nor design, it is a fabulous specimen of how to use the simple rolling of dice to explain complex economic realities. New York University Politics Professor Bertell Ollmann created Class Struggle in 1978 to teach about the reality of capitalism according to Marxist theory. He also credits Magie’s Landlord’s Game with inspiration. From the game rules: “Class Struggle reflects the real struggle between the classes in our society. The object of the game is to win the revolution, alone or in alliance with other classes. Until then, classes — represented by different players — advance around the board, making and breaking alliances, and picking up strengths and weaknesses that determine the outcome of the elections and general strikes that occur along the way.” The game can be played with two to six players representing the classes (capitalists, workers, students, farmers, professionals, small businessmen). The goal is to accumulate as many assets as possible before the revolution arrives — since whoever has the most assets at that point wins.

The educational part — regarding the inequalities inherent in the capitalist system — start with the preparations for playing the game. Individuals don’t get to choose their class role in the game because, as the instructions note, “In real life, this is usually determined by the kind of family into which one is born.” Therefore, the game instructs players to “throw the genetic (or luck-of-birth) die … to see who plays what class.” This approach also means that the capitalist goes first, sets the direction of gameplay, to their right or left, and decides who should manage “the bank,” giving out assets and taking debits for the duration of the game. And, since the capitalist controls the government, they are the only one who can trigger the nuclear war option. If they do push the button, the game is over, with “no winners or losers in such a war.”

Although the game is firmly rooted in a societal class analysis from the 1970s, the chance cards that players pick up are witty and insightful even today. For example, one of the capitalist cards reads: “All your propaganda says a person is free when the government lets him alone. But almost everything one wants to do or have costs money, so only capitalists are really free. You can use your freedom to move two spaces ahead, after paying the workers two assets.” Meanwhile, a worker card says: “You have just been laid off from work. If you blame yourself, or foreign competition, or the blacks, or Jews, move two spaces back. If you blame the capitalists, move two spaces ahead.”

One serious impediment to playing this game is that it is no longer being produced, though copies are available on eBay or game sites and PDFs of the cards can be found online, along with the game board. Don’t forget to print out the original game box image featuring Karl Marx arm-wrestling Nelson Rockefeller. As noted in this game review, “They’re using their left arms, so of course Marx is winning.”

Suffragetto

More than 100 years ago, Suffragetto was “The very latest craze! An original and interesting game of skill between suffragettes and policemen, for two players.” These two players enact the street battles between the radical suffragettes and police constables in Edwardian London. Recently re-discovered, Suffragetto was originally designed and produced by the Women’s Social and Political Union, or WSPU. The militant WSPU broke off from their more pacifist suffrage sisters who advocated working within the system. WSPU embraced confrontational tactics of street disruption and property destruction due to their frustration at what they considered the slow pace of change. It’s worth noting that outside the purview of this simple boardgame, some social movement scholars have argued that the decision to escalate with more violent tactics actually slowed the WSPU’s path to victory.

In the game, the simple goal of the suffragettes is to break past the police lines and occupy the House of Commons while keeping the police from getting in to Albert Hall and shutting down their meeting. Conversely, the police are trying to break past the suffragette line and occupy the WSPU meeting space, while defending the House of Commons. The first group to get six of its markers into their opponents home base wins. Each side has 21 markers with both leadership and rank and file. Five larger markers represent the “police inspectors” or the suffragette leaders. The play is somewhat similar to a checkers game — with captured or “disabled” policemen sent to the hospital and captured or arrested suffragettes sent to prison (of course).

In some ways, Suffragetto can be seen as a physical manifestation of the bigger crisis in British society around the role of women. The campaign to secure the vote opened up a conversation about women’s relationship to power and their use of public venues to exercise their rights. More militant leaders of the time openly embraced an ideology based on claiming equal civil and human rights for women and emphasized the importance of preparing oneself physically for this work — quite a bold stance at the time. When the WSPU’s escalated tactics were met with increased police repression and brutality, the WSPU responded by creating a 30-woman bodyguard corps for protection called the “Amazons.” Supporting athleticism and self-defense training for women as essential feminine knowledge was a radical move — and likely so was the production of a game that offered a way for women to practice and think strategically about activist conflict.

Since the game is way out of print (there is only one known copy of the game in a museum in the United Kingdom) you can either download and print your own game or access the newly developed online version. Play this game if you want a historical taste of early suffrage struggles challenging gender norms through the flexing of feminist game-playing muscles!

Freedom: The Underground Railroad

This is an intense historical game, set in the pivotal time of the Underground Railroad in the United States from the early 1800s to the Civil War. Produced by Academy Games, which is known for its attention to detail and high production value, Freedom is a beautifully presented collection of tokens, maps, historical cards and more.

The game takes on the heavy subject of slavery by engaging players as abolitionists who work together supporting the Underground Railroad against the institution of slavery. It has both easier and more difficult versions, both of which require the collaboration of the players to develop strategy and win, moving enslaved people to freedom.

Play this game ready to tackle difficult content and make hard decisions. Losing people to the slave trade can be rough, but moving them to freedom can be incredibly uplifting and rewarding. Play this game also to remind yourself that slavery was once an institution that seemed intractable, but was ultimately defeated through the sincere and intense engagement of many people over time.

In the game, players work to raise funds for the Underground Railroad and other abolitionist work, as well as to change the minds of Americans on the issue overall. It is recommended for one to four players, with about 90 minutes of playtime for ages 13 and above. It offers some of the best edu-tainment found in current games, balancing the historical facts and figures with intense action flow. Players need to figure out how to balance their work of moving enslaved people to freedom with raising the funds needed to keep the work going — all the while, slave catchers roam the board threatening to capture runaways and return them to plantations. With good focus and cooperative play, players could end slavery during their session. And that success is inspirational.

Early mornings in the desert are usually dry, dusty and warm — in the summer, sometimes excruciatingly hot. There was a bit of a wind on the morning of Feb. 26, one that carried a certain sense of foreboding: a nasty sirocco, or sandstorm, was apparently on its way. Still, there was also an anxious anticipation, as an historic resistance action was about to take place.

On the eve of the 42nd declaration of a still-unrecognized Sahwari Arab Democratic Republic, and after 136 years of Spanish colonialism and Moroccan occupation, people from all walks and areas of Western Saharan life were about to assert themselves as a united people by voting in a symbolic but highly representative referendum for full independence as a nation. The people of Western Sahara were not waiting for colonialists, neo-colonists, or an unresponsive global community to grant them what they are in the business of building for themselves.

One shouldn’t have to be a human rights expert, a lawyer specializing in international border policy, or a modern-day Pan-Africanist to know that colonialism has long been declared a crime against humanity. The connections between land, freedom, sovereignty and self determination have been established as universally significant to the life of a people. Since the founding of the United Nations after the Second World War, when questions of extermination and genocide were undoubtedly prescient, subjugated people — imprisoned by external powers and occupying military forces — were given new hope. More than 70 years later, however, only a small handful of concerned people outside of the Sahara region of Northwest Africa seem to care or even know about the plight of the colonized Sahrawi nation.

The dramatic nonviolent action and an accompanying conference at the end of February might begin to change all that.

The hundreds who gathered were a tiny cross-section from dozens of affiliated Sahwari organizations, communities and geographic areas. Groups of women adorned in traditional dress sang, shouted and waved the national flag, with the word “Liberty” written across it in Arabic and Catalan. Lines of people from near and far signed in, were handed a voting card, and cast their ballot for a free, independent and united Western Sahara. The action was symbolic and simple, but deeply emotional for all those involved. The referendum results were clear, the international legal and humanitarian consensus is evident. There is just a lack of consciousness outside of the region about these people and their struggle.

In the middle of the desert west of Algeria, in the middle of what many would call nowhere at all (and literally off the map of even progressive cartographers), lies three interrelated yet distinct territories. Western Sahara itself, recognized by the United Nations since 1963 as a non-self-governing territory, is split in two. The majority of it is occupied by Morocco, which has taken total control of its land and natural resources. “The rich Sahawari phosphate reserves were essentially stolen by the Moroccans,” noted legal scholar Magdalene Moonsamy, a former member of South Africa’s Parliament, who also reported that their High Court ruled on February 23 that the valuable minerals now mined by international corporations “have never belonged to Morocco, and are owned by the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic.” Morocco’s exploitation of Western Sahara represents one of the last — and geographically the largest — direct examples of colonialism left in the world.

The second geographic area which is part of Sahwari territory is a liberated zone, governed by the Sahawari liberation movement known as the Polisario Front. Polisario has controlled this rural region since 1975 when Morocco gained military control over all but this section of the Sahawari national land. The liberated zone is largely inhabited by traditionally nomadic people, who join with Polisario combat units to protect the small communities that have developed close to the waterways, which serve as an almost oasis in the desert.

Finally, outside of Western Saharan territory on western tip of the Algerian border, which disputedly belongs to Morocco, is a series of six huge refugee villages, potentially housing more than 100,000 Sahawari people who have been forced off their land. In a stable and supportive relationship between Polisario and Algeria, these lands are run by a Sahawari government structure in exile, the perfect place to hold a large coming together of those living under the occupation, those spread out in the diaspora, those living in the camps themselves, plus a few international solidarity workers. Perhaps the most historic aspect of the resistance referendum was the coming together of all of these groups in a united, national display.

NOVA, a youth movement committed to nonviolence made up of Sahawari activists across these borders, has emerged as a major force of change throughout the region. “Our strategy is to continue the peaceful struggle which began at the very beginning of colonialism and continues right up to today,” stated Maglaha Hamma, president of NOVA, at the opening session of the Sahara Rise conference, which took place in the refugee village of Smara from February 25-27.

The conference included Polisario leadership and a broad cross-section of Sahawari civil society, and focused on building coordination of a global work plan of civil resistance. Brahim Dahane, a former political prisoner still living in and representing Sahwaris under occupation, asserted that “one of the greatest victories of peaceful resistance has been our ability to speak as one people, empowered to build bridges” across borders.

Mohamed Elouali Akeik, the Polisario Minister for the Occupied Territories and the Diaspora, echoed that perspective, emphasizing that the essential goal of the resistance is to “regain the rights of all of our identity as a people.” Noting that resistance was growing significantly every day, Elouali Akeik said that “we are all prisoners so long as there are any prisoners,” and added that all those concerned with human rights must “oppose the legitimacy of Morocco’s occupation by all peaceful means.”

It is noteworthy that all sectors of Western Sahara society make little distinction between the significance of the armed actions of the past and the embracing of radical nonviolence today. There are no significant divisions between peoples and groups based on these different approaches and ideological strains. As one local Smara activist put it, “we started with armed resistance and have now come to peaceful resistance. We have a huge heritage of resistance.”

That resistance will surely continue to take many forms, and has already included numerous acts of creative civil disobedience. Elder organizer Deida Uld El Yazid, known as the Sheikh of the Intifada for his participation in countless sit-ins, protests and meetings, was one of the first to pull together the 30,000-person Gdeim Izik encampment of 2010, taking back a small part of the land that had long been Sahwari. A new generation, dynamically committed to building across Pan-Arab and Pan-African lines, had already taken the lead by the time of El Yazid’s death in January 2018.

Abdeslam Omar Lahsen, the coordinator of the Sahara Rise action and conference coordinator is one such leader. He was also a co-founder of the Pan-African Nonviolence and Peacebuilding Network in 2014, which shares best practices and support to its affiliates in 35 countries from every region of the continent. At Sahara Rise, the spirit of solidarity with the ideals of peaceful change and Sahwari independence was evident, especially from neighboring Tunisia, which was represented in part by the recent Nobel Peace laureate organizations whose fundamental principles include dialogue and coalition-building. Tunisian organizer Inis Tlili, who works with NOVACT, the International Institute for Nonviolent Action, put it this way: “One of the main advantages of nonviolent resistance is that it opens the door for the participation of everyone!”

Well into the night, with fears of a worse storm in the days to come, the Sahwari activists discussed strategies and tactics. These included potential plans for a major boycott and divestment effort spotlighting the Moroccan occupation; for human rights campaigns focused on the repression and political imprisonment faced by many of their human rights defenders; and for increased work around the protection of natural resources. Through it all, the sentiments expressed by National Union of Sahwari Women leader Fatma Mehdi summed up the mood and understanding: “Organization is a crucial factor in resistance!”

This spring marks 19 years since the shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado. American adults could have – and should have – addressed this problem then, before the 14 students who were recently murdered at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School were even born. Where adults have failed repeatedly, and many have simply given up, the youth are now leading the charge.

On March 14, high school students all over the United States will walk out of class to mark the one month anniversary of the shootings at Stoneman Douglas. Additional days of protest are planned for March 24 and April 20 — the latter being the anniversary of the shootings at Columbine.

Following the righteous fury of Stoneman Douglas survivors Emma González, David Hogg, Jaclyn Corwin, Cameron Kasky and others (and building on the networks and expertise of existing organizations such as Everytown for Gun Safety), a nationwide, youth-led movement for gun reform is emerging under the social media hashtag “Never Again.”

There have already been walkouts and other protests at high schools and middle schools in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and elsewhere. The movement is growing.

Whether these protests will lead to real change is not yet clear. Young people have very little formal political power. They do not have the money to rival big donors, and they are a terribly ineffective voting bloc. Many cannot vote, and those who can do not do so in large numbers.

However, teenagers have other strengths, the greatest of which may be a blatant disrespect for the status quo. In this case, they have refused to accept the prevailing wisdom that the National Rifle Association is an invincible bedrock of American political life. They have rejected as foolish older generations’ assurances that there is nothing that can be done to reduce gun violence in this country.

Judging by the reactions of Gateway Pundit, Fox News, and the NRA leadership, the gun lobby is terrified of #NeverAgain, and it should be.

Teenagers have been on the front lines of every major U.S. social movement in the last century. Through protest, high school students have succeeded in changing dress codes, desegregating schools and businesses, ending bans on dancing, and forcing the firing (or re-hiring) of teachers, coaches and principals. They have won multiple U.S. Supreme Court cases. They have even toppled governments.

In 1936, students in Alameda, California walked out of class to demand the re-instatement of their recently fired superintendent, William Paden. The city’s mayor, after initially threatening to declare martial law, caved and brought Paden back. The teens won, and their victory inspired other high schoolers, setting off a minor high school strike wave across the country. The mayor’s administration, meanwhile, collapsed amid a series of scandals.

In 1950, the mayor of New York City was so frightened by a citywide high school student strike that he ordered City Hall to be defended by more than a hundred police officers (25 of them on horseback), as well as FBI agents. The students’ demand was a raise for their teachers, and they eventually won it.

Stoneman Douglas student Emma González has publicly referenced the young people of Des Moines, Iowa, who — by protesting the Vietnam War — established student free speech rights with the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1969 Tinker v. Des Moines decision. A walkout by high school students was integral to an even more famous U.S. Supreme Court case as well — Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.

But protest alone did not create these victories. Protests only work when they apply pressure on the powerful.

For youth movements, success has generally hinged on young people’s abilities to split the adult coalitions aligned against them. They have had to isolate their opponents by attracting adult allies to their cause: parents against the principal, principals and teachers against the schoolboard, parents and lawyers against legislatures, etc.

In Alameda, the students won in large part because they made common cause with adults who were already angry with Mayor Hans Roebke for their own reasons. This alliance brought positive newspaper coverage for their strike, additional pressure on city hall from recall petitions, and a fundraising dance — for strike supplies — hosted by a local hotel.

Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division escort the Little Rock Nine students into the all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Ark. (Wikimedia/US Army)

More famously, in 1957, nine black high school students desegregated Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas by repeatedly putting their own lives in danger, creating a public relations nightmare that prompted President Dwight Eisenhower (and the 101st Airborne Division of the U.S. Army) to intervene on their behalf against the state’s segregationist governor, Orval Faubus.

Just as those students undercut the authority of Gov. Faubus and of Mayor Roebke, #NeverAgain is trying to isolate the NRA. For example they are using the heightened platform of the moment to pressure companies that either have traditionally offered perks to NRA members (such as Delta Airlines, Hertz and Avis), or that must balance the financial benefits of unrestricted gun sales against the possibility of boycotts of their other products (such as Walmart, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Fred Meyer and L.L. Bean).

If these efforts continue, they could undermine one of the NRA’s major public strategies — using mainstream associations to legitimize its fringe positions and normalize its dangerous agenda.

#NeverAgain youth activists have also tried to pressure politicians directly, including the Florida legislature, President Donald Trump, and Sen. Marco Rubio, whose obvious national ambitions may make him especially vulnerable. Thus far, they have had little success. This may have to be a task for adults, who can provide the money and votes that youth cannot. Companies such as Walmart willingly implementing some of the most popular reforms, such as age restrictions and bans on specific weapons, could make legislation more palatable, though they could just as likely end up strengthening the argument that regulation is not necessary.

To win, #NeverAgain will have to continue to ramp up pressure on the NRA and its backers, and gain allies among responsible and knowledgeable gun owners. The movement will have to create division between Republican voters and NRA-backed candidates and, as importantly, between the NRA and other major conservative donors. Activists will ultimately have to force a political realignment that convinces the Democratic Party to take a meaningful stand on the issue.

There is a real danger, however, that the NRA will be able to capture the narrative and capitalize on this crisis, furthering its goal of arming everyone, without restriction — beginning with school teachers.

For now, #NeverAgain is gaining momentum and attracting both support and ire from the nation’s adults. School administrators in Waukesha, Wisconsin; Somerset County, Maine; and Needville, Texas, for example, have issued stern warnings against student protests. On the other side, dozens of U.S. colleges and universities have offered statements of support, promising that punishment for protesting would not negatively impact students’ chances for admission.

The upcoming student days of action, paired with other issues impacting public education, should force the issue into the spotlight even further — compelling Americans of all ages and political stripes to choose a side.

The youth leading this nationwide charge follow in the footsteps of more than a century of teenage rebels, from the Uprising of the 20,000 that challenged sweatshop working conditions in 1909, to the Chicano Blow-Outs of 1968, to the Gay-Straight Alliances of the last few decades.

#NeverAgain activists are also beneficiaries of a protest culture that has been hard-fought and sustained more recently by the Sanctuary/DACA movement, #MeToo and the Women’s March, Standing Rock, the Movement for Black Lives, and K-12 teachers’ strikes in West Virginia and elsewhere. All of these, as it happens, have included the participation of high school students.

How these many movements together make common cause — and identify shared structural and individual opponents — will be of the utmost importance if this is to become an effective mass movement.

That question will depend not just on what the youth do in the next few months, but also on how responsible adults react — on whether they decide to leave the sidelines.

Protesters outside King’s Theater during Bill de Blasio’s 2018 State of the City address on Feb. 13. (Community Voices Heard)

Mayor Bill de Blasio’s 2018 State of the City address, held on Feb. 13 at Brooklyn’s renowned King’s Theater, was premised on a particularly bold claim. The words “Mayor Bill de Blasio Making New York America’s Fairest Big City” were emblazoned on the marquee so that attendees, passersby and the scores of protesters who had been forced to the other side of Flatbush Avenue couldn’t miss them.

Yet, de Blasio has advocated for the privatization of public housing and has the support of major real estate interests. It’s no surprise then that his “tale of two cities” rhetoric leaves public housing tenants cold, in some sense literally. This winter, more than 320,000 New York City Housing Authority, or NYCHA, residents lost either their heat or hot water, exemplifying decades of neglect. In response, some are rallying with the grassroots organization Community Voices Heard, or CVH. They are pushing a platform that demands the mayor make good on his progressive rhetoric and take bold measures to abolish their hazardous living conditions.

Protesters from CVH began assembling in front of the theater at around 5 p.m. to demand that the mayor fully fund repairs in public housing. Within minutes of their arrival, police ordered the demonstrators — who came from a number of other groups, including Equality for Flatbush, the Street Vendor Project and Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence — to the opposite side of the street, where they were blocked from view by NYPD vans. But the group remained steadfast due to the high stakes of their campaign.

Aside from having to deal with failing boilers, which are at least 50 years old, residents are also fed up with lingering toxic mold and lead paint. According one lawyer in a class action suit that resulted in a $57 million settlement from the NYCHA, the problems with lead paint have been acknowledged since the 1960s. Lapses like these are the product of decades of privatization and the whittling away at funding for public housing.

In February 2017, CVH responded to this human catastrophe with a rally on the steps of City Hall that was dubbed “NYCHA’s Making Me Sick.” However, their demands — calling for the city budget to be used to address public health and housing crises affecting low-income black and brown communities — went unheard. Towards the end of last year, New York City officials began calling for the resignation of NYCHA Chief Executive Shola Olatoye for incorrectly stating that the housing authority had been properly conducting lead paint inspections.

Drawing on momentum provided by its member-leaders — NYCHA residents who are now trained organizers — Community Voices Heard has been pushing a model for public housing based on local finance and community control. This year, they want the mayor’s office to commit $2 billion of the city’s nearly $89 billion budget to overhaul infrastructure. Last year, CVH prevailed upon the mayor to allocate $1 billion annually to repairs and improving conditions. Since de Blasio did not make that commitment, they’ve raised this year’s request accordingly.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is typically the mainstay of financial support for public housing. With the Trump budget threatening to take $466 million away from NYCHA, however, local funding has become even more crucial. For CVH lead organizer Gabriel Strachota, doing something unprecedented — like directing substantial amounts of city money to public housing — would demonstrate that de Blasio is ready to “put his money where his mouth is when it comes to being a Progressive Democrat.” Strachota argues that while de Blasio was not the first mayor to support a privatization agenda in New York, he has contributed to growing the various crises in NYCHA by endorsing the idea that there is no alternative to public-private partnerships.

Beyond providing the necessary funding, CVH also wants the city to be truly accountable to residents. This means recognizing and elevating their power as stakeholders in their own homes. Thus, CVH has proposed the formation of a resident-led oversight board meant to combat negligence and cover-ups on the part of NYCHA. Comprised of the heads of tenants associations from NYCHA buildings throughout the city, this body would certify whether repairs are completed or not and would have access to the agency’s internal documents upon request.

A vehicle advertising the demands of Community Voices Heard for the mayor outside of his speech. (WNV/Skanda Kadirgamar)

This two-pronged attack on the city’s inaction — demanding local funding and giving residents their own watchdog group — is representative of CVH’s strategic model, which they call “power analysis.” As Strachota explains, their understanding of power is drawn from a definition Martin Luther King Jr. provided, when he said “power is the ability to achieve purpose.”

This approach revolves around the political clout that residents can generate themselves. Strachota said that both the growth and integrity of CVH’s campaigning relies upon the relationships between NYCHA residents. As he further explained, “one key source of power is through organized people, through the assemblage of relationships.” In the wake of the “bomb cyclone” in January, there are signs that their efforts may be having an impact, as members of City Council are beginning to call upon the mayor to increase funding for the NYCHA.

Building the power of tenants entails helping them organize in networks that can take collective action. There are many examples of this from the weeks leading up to the State of the City protest. On January 18, residents from each of the five boroughs met at CUNY’s Murphy Institute to discuss tactics for pressuring the administration that ranged from gathering petitions to organizing marches to filing class action suits. On February 2, CVH helped further escalate pressure by coordinating a mass call-in to de Blasio’s office. Over 800 people flooded the mayor’s phone that day.

To ensure that collective action continues, CVH trains its members to organize their communities. This involves CVH members recruiting leaders in their buildings, workplaces, schools and families who are influential enough to consistently bring people into the organizing process, which include attending actions and meetings. Cultivating that organic leadership prevents campaign work from turning into a series of one-off actions that allow political energy and focus to dissipate in their aftermath.

CVH develops its relationships with these organic leaders and aims to further develop their effectiveness as organizers by using a method that was central to the work of Fred Ross, Cesar Chavez and Delores Huerta. “The first thing we do is that we build a relationship with them,” Strachota said. “We sit down with them and have a one-to-one meeting, but we’re not talking about policy. We’re talking about who a person is and what’s happened to them to make them that way.”

Talking to these prospective organizers about the struggles they face is crucial to their understanding of the roles they play in the campaign. That self reflection is also key to their understanding of power. Afterwards, these individuals often are asked to hold a house meeting, to gather people they know and try to solicit active support for the campaign from them. According to Strachota, meetings like these were the foundation of both the United Farm Workers and the Community Service Organization, which for decades has been emphasizing to unions the strategic importance of building collective power through face-to-face gatherings.

Rose Fernandes and her son Giancarlo are among the residents who have joined the struggle and have been animated by the force of this organizing process. Rose, having faced too many winters without water or heat, was slow to join initially. The weathering effect of neglect and isolation were the source of her reticence. “At one point, I had kind of been in this sleep state,” she said. “I didn’t know what to do, who to talk to. I didn’t think anybody would listen.” After organizing for about a year and seeing more people push back against the city and NYCHA management, she said she was thrilled and that CVH helped her find her voice.

“One of the things that’s hardest to organize against is the sense of hopelessness and suspicion that exists among residents,” said Giancarlo, who was responsible for bringing his mother into the organizing process. “My mom thought it was a cult or someone trying to get money out of us.” Sentiment like this is reinforced by predatory behavior and retaliation from the people who run the housing authority. At one point, a NYCHA manager refused to perform needed maintenance in their apartment in an attempt to extort money. According to Giancarlo, hostility like this, in addition to the threat of eviction, is the norm in public housing and makes residents fearful of taking action.

Having the opportunity to push back against such oppression is what motivates him as an organizer. That, in turn, has reframed how he views the building he calls home, as well as the power dynamics that shape it. “Most of the time what I had heard about living in NYCHA was ‘keep your head down, get a good job and leave,’” Giancarlo explained. “But the truth is that it’s very difficult because as your salary increases so does your rent.” Ensuring that residents have power in public housing is now a goal for him. “CVH offered me a path that was not any of the dominant narrative storylines I was being fed about trying to get out. I could organize and be a part of the change I wanted to see in NYCHA.”

The work of organizers like Rose and Giancarlo Fernandes will become even more crucial now that the Trump budget has been passed, which comes with a rent hike to as much as 35 percent of NYCHA residents’ gross income. The coming years will be rough. However, tenants are discovering their agency and many are considering responding to Trump’s onslaught and de Blasio’s intransigence with a rent strike. The question remains, however, whether the networks they’ve built have generated the power they need to pull off such an ambitious action in this particular moment.

A march against direct Dutch rule on the Caribbean island of St. Eustatius on Feb. 7. (WNV/Esther Henry)

An emergency move from the Dutch government on Feb. 6 to dissolve the local authority of its Caribbean island, St. Eustatius, is bringing new urgency to the Statian struggle for decolonization.

The power shuffle comes after a damning report from the national State Secretary accusing the administration of the island — which has special Dutch municipal status — of lawlessness, financial mismanagement, discrimination and intimidation. With parliamentary backing but no prior consultation with the local population, a government commission was deployed to replace the island’s council and college board.

“They don’t abide by Dutch laws, and as a result they fall outside Dutch law and order. No government can accept that,” Jan Fransen, one of the report’s authors, told Dutch public broadcaster NPO2. “They want to apply their own laws because they believe they have the right to govern the island themselves.”

The move was met with a silent protest march on the island, also known as Statia, over what activists see as a colonial power grab that undermines their sovereignty.

“The takeover wasn’t really a surprise,” said Glenn Schmidt, co-founder of the activist group Pro Statia which advocates for autonomy of the island. “The possibility of Dutch intervention in Statia was hanging over our heads for some time now because of the disturbed relationship between our local government and The Hague. But what was shocking is the extent of it — that they put the entire democratically-elected government aside.”

Tensions between the central government and Statian authority had been running high since last September when the military was restoring order on Dutch Caribbean islands wrecked by Hurricane Irma. Clyde van Putten, head of the Progressive Labor Party and coalition leader of the local council, had reportedly threatened then Dutch Interior Minister Ronald Plasterk, saying “If you bring the military with you, then we will kill them and we will burn them on the streets of Statia.”

But more than just a provocateur, Van Putten has also been a long-time vocal opponent of the island’s special municipal status, which it got in 2010 with the dissolution of the Dutch Antilles. Curacao and St. Martin joined Aruba as autonomous lands under the Dutch Kingdom while smaller islands Saba, Bonaire and St. Eustatius became special municipalities.

“The people of Statia never opted for this status,” said Xiomara Balentina, co-founder and leader of the Brighter Path Foundation, an activist group pushing for a popular referendum. “We have no direct representation in the Dutch Parliament, and get fewer social benefits. There is no equality, political or economic.”

Pro Statia and Brighter Path Foundation are the two grassroots organizations that since 2012 have become a political force in the fight for Statia’s autonomy. Through town hall meetings, seminars and rallies they have been educating and mobilizing the island of 3,400 inhabitants to “bring awareness to our people about our constitutional status and to encourage conversations about the type of constitutional relationship they envision for the future,” Balentina said.

In 2014 their organizing work succeeded in pressuring the local government to hold a popular referendum on the island’s constitutional status. Although 65 percent backed becoming autonomous within the kingdom, the total voter turnout was well below the threshold to be considered binding.

Autonomy within the Dutch Kingdom would mean Statians can take government and legislation into their own hands even as the Netherlands maintains financial oversight as well as control over the military and foreign affairs.

“We believe us Statians can and must grow to handle most of our own internal affairs,” Schmidt explained. “The attitude of the Dutch government seems to be more in the direction of we must sit quiet while they ‘do it for us.’ We reject this idea. We want to be rulers on our island and develop a community for our Caribbean people, not for Statia to become a European outpost for Europeans.”

The Statian struggle for autonomy continues a longer historic trail of denied democracy and freedom from Dutch rulers. A colonial possession that switched hands between Dutch and British empires since 1636, Statia was a central port in the transatlantic slave and arms trade. It was also known as the “golden rock” for its sugarcane and tobacco plantations, which were exploited with slave labor.

Slavery was officially abolished in 1863, but it wasn’t until 1948 — with the end of World War II and Indonesian independence — that men on the island could vote. Women couldn’t vote until 1963, more than 20 years after Dutch women in the mainland. The Dutch Colonial Council justified withholding democracy from their colonies by saying its people weren’t sufficiently “ripe” or “properly developed,” and so required “pure colonial governance.”

This colonial logic seems to persist today as Statians seek to achieve greater freedom. When Van Putten formally petitioned for autonomy with the central government in January last year, Prime Minister Rutte never responded.

Van Putten’s move to seek dialogue with the Dutch government had come directly from a strategic plan laid out by a constitutional committee that representatives from Pro Statia and the Brighter Path Foundation joined after 2014. The activists also released a white paper to present their case for autonomy, drafted a constitution for popular consultation, and lobbied with the U.N. for the island’s reenlistment as non-self-governing territory.

But for Francio Guadeloupe, a social anthropology professor at Amsterdam University and former president of the University of St. Martin, these are political tactics that seem to evade the more pressing issue of economic inequality gripping the island.

“These islands and the people living there did not choose to become Dutch, they are part of a tragedy called imperialism,” Guadeloupe explained. “We can all say this is wrong. But to reduce the situation to a political struggle between two administrations is forgetting the people feeling the brunt, working for, or below minimum wage. A referendum won’t immediately solve their concerns.”

St. Eustatius, like its neighboring Caribbean islands with special municipal status, face higher poverty rates than those on the Dutch mainland, despite being part of the same kingdom. Since the dissolution of the Antilles, the costs of living have risen dramatically while wages and welfare have stayed the same. When it comes to the rights of Dutch people in the Caribbean, the Netherlands applies a double standard, a 2016 report from the Dutch College of Human Rights concluded.

“Let’s start with that — solving their concerns — then we can think about creating a structure that is more equal,” Guadeloupe added. “If people live a decent life they are better able to choose what political administration they want, what political leaders they want to support. Asking them to do so when they can hardly survive is disingenuous.”

For activists on the ground, however, they say their priority is now set on continuing to protest Dutch interventionism and making sure their elections in 2019 go ahead as scheduled.

“People have an intrinsic need to be free. All people, at some point in their lives, want to govern themselves,” Balentina said. “The Netherlands at one point in its history was dominated by Spain, the Dutch fought for its independence. So why can’t we?”

Almost a decade after beginning his recovery from heroin addiction, Brett Bramble is undertaking a new challenge. Accompanied by his dog Domino and a small group of fellow activists, Bramble set off on foot in mid-January on a six-month-long, 2,400-mile journey from Florida to Maine. His walk seeks to raise visibility, foster conversations and find solutions to the skyrocketing rates of opioid addiction and overdose that have become a nationwide public health emergency in recent years, killing over 140 Americans a day.

“For me, it all started when my sister died from a heroin overdose [nearly four years ago],” Bramble said. “She only started using in the last three months of her life. That’s all it took.”

Bramble’s walk is one piece within a broader “recovery activist” movement that has been gaining momentum around the nation over the past decade. Led by people living in recovery or still facing addiction — along with family members whose loved ones died from overdose — the movement is becoming increasingly organized by targeting a variety of actors, drawing in key stakeholders and incorporating a range of tactics to pressure for change. Activists are becoming more strategic in their actions — staging rallies and die-ins across the country, drafting petitions and launching lawsuits.

One such activist is Nan Goldin, a 64-year-old photographer in recovery from addiction to OxyContin. In January, Goldin and her group, Prescription Addiction Intervention Now, or PAIN, launched a petition targeting Purdue Pharma and its owners, the multi-billion dollar Sackler family. With nearly 25,000 signatures gathered so far, they are demanding that Purdue fund recovery services, opioid addiction education and public dispensers of Narcan, the emergency medicine dispensed to counter a drug overdose.

Goldin’s petition and Bramble’s walk are evidence that the recovery movement is shifting from raising awareness of addiction to pressuring for immediate, tangible action that saves lives. According to Dean LeMire, a New Hampshire-based activist in recovery, “The movement exists in waves.” The first wave involves standing up, identifying oneself as someone living in recovery, and thereby showing people that recovery is possible. The second wave, he explained, is telling elected officials: “We need dollars for this stuff.” That means educating the general public about recovery services and building the political will to allocate adequate funding to prevention and recovery.

This “second wave” shift is creating an increasingly mobilized, politically-active base of recovery advocates and activists. Their work has included educating and registering voters — particularly people who are facing addiction or are in recovery — as well as pressuring for legislative change, funding for recovery services and corporate accountability. While such efforts have led to the creation of initiatives like the 2016 Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, or CARA — which funds prevention, treatment and recovery initiatives nationally — much more is needed to address the scale of the growing epidemic.

At the same time, the movement’s so-called “first wave” efforts — reducing prejudice and increasing awareness of addiction — is far from complete. Ryan Hampton, a prominent voice in the recovery movement, compared the stigma surrounding addiction to the social ostracism people faced during the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. Much like back then, “the shame keeps people silent,” he explained. “People are dying now from overdose because they’re mortified to come out and identify as a drug user.”

Hampton said his life changed when he watched the 2013 film “The Anonymous People,” a documentary featuring the stories of people living in long-term recovery from drugs and alcohol. Having confronted his own addiction to heroin, Hampton started the Voices Project in 2017, which encourages people to “come out” and share their recovery stories, using social media as a platform for people to connect with and support one another.

Despite steps towards destigmatizing addiction, the movement faces a somber uphill battle, as its leading participants must also deal with the ongoing challenges of long-term recovery. “For everybody who is in recovery, it is a daily fight to [survive],” Hampton said. Still, in many ways, that struggle is aided by channeling grief into action. That’s one reason Hampton was able to register 100 new “recovery voters” in just three weeks time by simply saying: “Are you sick of your friends dying? Well here’s something you can do.”

Tactics and visibility

So far, some of the movement’s major actions have promoted visibility and solidarity among people in recovery, often through coalitions with other campaigns. Since 2014, Families of Addicts has brought together thousands of people for the annual “Rally 4 Recovery” in Dayton, Ohio, which includes a 5k run, a raffle and a balloon launch, as well as resource tables for people facing addiction.

On the national level, activists came together in October 2015 with a coalition of over 450 organizations from around the country for the UNITE to Face Addiction rally and concert on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The rally was hosted by Facing Addiction, a national organization that advocates for the over 85 million Americans affected by addiction around the country.

Some of these actions, which aim to destigmatize addiction, have taken place on social media, where Hampton plays a central role in mobilizing numbers to respond quickly when a situation arises. For example, when Arizona House Majority Leader Kelly Townsend posted offensive comments about drug users on Facebook in 2016, Hampton quickly shared her contact information on his page, which had around 40,000 followers at the time. According to Hampton, she was flooded with 1,500 phone calls in just three hours. But rather than shame her or call her names, Hampton recalled people saying things like, “‘Hey, I just want you to know I’m in recovery, here’s who I am today.’ Or, ‘My kid died of an overdose. He was a good kid. Let me tell you about him.’”

These actions played an important role in humanizing the issue and gaining a spotlight to tell the personal stories behind recovery and addiction. “We saw that storytelling — kicking down those closet doors — could have a massive impact,” Hampton said.

“Ryan Hampton (left) has been a vocal advocate in the recovery movement, mobilizing actions on social media and starting the Voices Project to bring together people facing addiction. (Ryan Hampton)

Meanwhile, other actions have fallen more squarely under the “second wave” category of mobilizing political pressure. In 2015, activists with the Weed for Warriors project dumped pill bottles and syringes in front of the White House lawn to drawn attention to the overprescription of opioid drugs to wounded veterans. Then, last May, protesters held a “die-in” at the New Hampshire State House when U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price visited the capitol.

As with the reaction to Townsend’s insensitive remarks, many of these direct actions occur through mobilization over social media. When one woman shopping at the cosmetic store Sephora discovered a line of makeup products called “Druggie,” she posted about it on social media, creating an instant internet sensation. The incident quickly went viral, and activists again flooded the company with phone calls and social media posts condemning the product line. Sephora eventually discontinued the product, and — according to Hampton — he and other organizers within the movement were contacted by a public relations firm asking them to “please call off the dogs.”

While these incidents make headlines and gain public attention, much of the movement-building work is comparatively slow and incremental, enacted more at the local and state levels. This includes seeking government support and funding for harm reduction strategies, including the formation of recovery community organizations, or RCOs, which are nonprofit organizations that plan recovery advocacy efforts, as well as community education and outreach. Activists are also pushing for syringe exchange programs, increased health care access for drug users, and safe injection sites like the ones San Francisco plans to open in July — the first in the nation.

Much of this may not look like activism, LeMire acknowledged — at least not in the sense of crowds swarming in the streets, chanting and demanding change from the government. “This is all slow-cooker stuff,” he said. “But none of [these] formal supports were around three years ago, so I know we’re headed in the right direction.”

Mobilizing a wide spectrum of allies

A significant advantage to the recovery activist movement is the sheer number of people it stands to reach. One in three people in America are directly affected by addiction, either through personal experience as a user or through a close friend or family member. The movement therefore holds immense potential to mobilize a wide range of stakeholders, a base of supporters, which — unlike many current movements — spans both sides of the political divide. According to a Pew exit poll conducted after the 2016 election, both Republicans and Democrats consider addiction to be a “very big problem.”

“I’ve met parents who were enthusiastic Trump supporters because they had been fed the message of building the wall and keeping the drugs from Mexico,” Hampton said, adding that he would then tell parents to think about how a “repeal and replace” of health care legislation would affect their son or daughter. “It’s like a lightbulb goes off in their heads, and they don’t want to see another four years of Donald Trump.”

President Trump has repeatedly declared the opioid epidemic a major problem, but does not allocate funding for it to be systematically addressed. In October 2017, the Trump administration declared the opioid epidemic a public health emergency, but did not request emergency funding from Congress and did not declare a national state of emergency, which would have allowed states to use the federal Disaster Relief Fund to address the crisis.

Recovery activists described how the escalating crisis of addiction and overdose — as well as the government’s inaction to address it — is increasing the movement’s sense of urgency to take more extreme measures. People have long sought to earn a seat at the table with important decision makers, both Hampton and LeMire explained, but now they may be compelled to take more direct or confrontational measures.

“We’re just getting a pat on the head,” Hampton said. “It’s an affirmative action play that policymakers need to have that seat for us, but don’t actually have to listen to us. We’re sick of that. We don’t need a seat at that table if that’s how we’re going to be treated. People are building their own tables, and that’s more powerful.”

LeMire echoed Hampton’s sentiments, saying, “We finally got a seat at the table, but this president is hostile to any social or mental health services. People are trying to give him more chances, thinking that maybe he will listen. But now we are seeing activists starting to understand that we need to just totally refuse this administration. We need to take to the streets.”

The shift towards direct action is a challenging one to make for a community so frequently criminalized. People have identified as “advocates” in recent years and sought to make change through official channels, but many are skeptical of making the shift towards more confrontational “activist” tactics. Hampton said that when he started using the word “activist,” people groaned and asked him, “Are we there yet?” He told them, “I don’t think we have a choice.”

“For so long we have been trying to ingratiate ourselves to a society that distrusted us, to decision makers who distrusted us,” LeMire said, adding that people have long been trying to counter the perception that they might “steal your wallet.” But now, he reflected, “We have to break away from this.”

While the stigma against people facing addiction serves as a major challenge to the development of an activist movement, one important set of allies is trying to change that: parents who have lost their children to overdose. The testimonies of these parents appeals to public sympathy and outrage, making the movement more relatable to the average person and increasing public pressure for political change.

“Most of the [parents of loss] that I’ve met have dedicated their lives to ending overdoses,” Hampton said. “They’ve made treatment more accessible, taken on Big Pharma and taken on big policy leaders on Capitol Hill.”

These parents and family members are playing a vital and visible role in the movement, countering some of the negative associations that can be tied to recovery activism with the power of their personal stories, which help to humanize the abstract, demonized image of an addict.

A generational shift

Another major challenge the movement faces exists within the divided approaches to recovery. Hampton described this as both a generational and cultural change within the recovery community, from abstinence-only programs to those focused on “harm reduction.”

“In my personal experience, some of the hardest challengers of the movement have been from within the recovery community itself, mostly the 12-step group,” Hampton said. While these programs have helped a lot of people on their journey to recovery, including Hampton, they represent a different approach to overcoming addiction that is shifting with the new wave of activism and advocacy today.

Twelve-step programs promote full abstinence from drug use, and often highlight the role of religion and the importance of anonymity. The emerging recovery movement, on the other hand, encourages people to “come out” and share their recovery stories. It promotes an approach to recovery that seeks to “meet people where they’re at,” LeMire said, “which may well be face-down in a public restroom or hotel.”

This new approach advocates syringe exchange and other services that allow people to continue using drugs, but in a safer, more controlled environment. According to LeMire, this creates a rift between the two approaches because both look at each other and think, “You’re killing people.”

Meanwhile, their concern is real because people are dying. Movement organizers are highly vulnerable themselves to overdose. Numerous advocates and activists have already died, and many other potential supporters are incarcerated or living on the margins of society. “In the past 19 months I’ve had 13 friends die,” Hampton said in December. “It’s not a question of when it’s gonna happen anymore, it’s a question of who.”

Two months later, Hampton had lost four more friends.

Challenging the movement as a ‘sea of white’

An important consideration for the movement to achieve long-term, systemic change is its ability to be representative of all people facing addiction. This means, according to activists at the forefront, that the movement must also recognize its own implicit biases, particularly the predominance of white, middle- and upper-class people it engages.

Although the movement is gaining ground today for criticizing the pharmaceutical industry and government policies around addiction, the criminalization of drug users began long before Nixon’s “War on Drugs,” with the persecution of black and Latino communities, and the targeting of jazz musicians like Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday by Commissioner Harry J. Anslinger, who headed the Federal Bureau of Narcotics from 1930-1962. This history is one reason why LeMire is pushing the current recovery movement to recognize and incorporate the dangers faced specifically by communities of color.

“The rallies and protests — they’re a sea of white,” LeMire said. “[People of color] are almost totally missing from the movement, but they have the most to lose.” This shapes one of the movement’s ongoing challenges, addressing the addiction crisis while elevating the voices of marginalized communities.

This poses a conundrum to the movement’s current successes, and requires the white, educated people within the movement to question the reasons many people have been sympathetic to their stories. LeMire, who once served as the face of an awareness campaign for Narcan, the emergency medication used to reverse an opioid overdose, said it was telling that they chose someone like him — “a white, bespectacled college grad.”

“Minority communities,” he explained, “have historically been disproportionately mistreated — not just untreated, but mistreated — as a result of the drug policies that created this situation.” A greater understanding of the way race and privilege have affected the criminalization of drug use and the services available to drug users could lead to what LeMire called the movement’s “third wave.”

If the second wave of the movement establishes more understanding, compassion and education surrounding recovery, it will only be accomplished, according to LeMire, “by addressing deep-rooted injustices,” particularly those that have been brought to the forefront under the Trump administration. Addressing the historical factors underlying the oppression of people with addiction, he concluded, “will mean passing the megaphone to those who have not yet had it.”

For some, the recovery activist movement aims to help people “find ways to not die today,” as LeMire put it. Yet, on a broader, systemic level, the recovery activist movement holds the potential to activate a massive, invigorated voter base on both sides of the political divide. It gives voice to those who feel powerless or unheard, and shapes the movement as one in which the fight against addiction and injustice will be led by those who have experienced it firsthand.

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In the year since Trump’s inauguration, we have seen an outpouring of popular mobilization in resistance to his administration’s policies. Crowd estimates suggest that 5.2-9 million people took to the streets in the United States to protest Trump’s policies or points of view over the past year. Many more have mobilized worldwide in reaction to the rise of right-wing populist movements across the globe, using people power to contest entrenched authority and confront oppressive regimes and systems.

While these outpourings of popular protest often look spontaneous, behind the scenes are an ever-evolving series of trainings, funding decisions and tactical innovations, often led by full-time organizers and activists. Successful campaigns of nonviolent resistance do not materialize over night, nor do they remain reactionary or improvisational. Instead, a tremendous amount of work goes on to ensure that such movements coalesce, maintain nonviolent discipline under repressive conditions and develop real staying power. Bringing millions of people to the streets is not an easy task, but maintaining momentum is even more difficult. It requires resources, organization, training, and time and space to build consensus around planning for the future.

At the same time as this dramatic rise in the use of nonviolent civil resistance around the world, dozens of organizations have developed to spread knowledge about the theory and practice of nonviolent action. Selina Gallo-Cruz points out the emergence of dozens of nonviolent conflict-oriented international non-governmental organizations over the past several decades, and the ways in which they may have helped diffuse knowledge and capacity about effective strategies for civil resistance. These include the late Gene Sharp’s Albert Einstein Institution, the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, Momentum, Rhize, the James Lawson Institute, Training for Change, and various other organizations.

In recognition of the unique challenges and opportunities women-identified activists face in training for and leading movements for social change, along with research that suggests that the inclusion of women in nonviolent movements is critical for building more peaceful societies, we launched the Inclusive Global Leadership Initiative Summer Institute to elevate and amplify the work that women activists are doing to catalyze social change. The inaugural IGLI Institute, in 2017, reaffirmed progressive understandings of the importance of explicitly engaging in gender-specific training, since women do — and must continue to — play essential roles in building and sustaining movements.

Women activists are often able to exploit gender roles within their societies to find ways to resist that are potent and disruptive without exposing themselves to the highest levels of risk. For instance, an IGLI participant from Uganda noted how she had utilized her pregnancy to distract security forces during a highly contentious protest in the national legislature. Traditional gender expectations of how pregnant women should behave provided her some cover to engage in contentious political action that would have likely gotten her arrested in another context. She emphasized women’s unique commitment to working as a group, emphasizing that for women, it is “ours not mine.” This was not a commitment to selflessness; rather, she emphasized that it is an assumption of risk — women commit to putting their bodies on the line to protect other women.

Another participant, from Madagascar, described how women used their unique virtues of “persistence and commitment” to stand outside the president’s house for 500 straight Thursdays to demand change. Their small act — which initially started with three people — eventually grew to include thousands.

In Ireland, another participant explained how women from the African diaspora were at the frontlines of campaigns to stop the deportations of non-Irish citizens, using their status as mothers and primary caregivers to lend credence to their demands.

Beyond additional skills and networks for mobilization, a powerful outcome of this women-only nonviolent resistance training space was the generation of solidarity among participants. This solidarity — built and sustained among activists from 15 countries so far — has paid off in concrete ways since the 2017 institute ended. First, some of the participants have experimented with organizing joint actions that have involved a new transnational dimension, as well as sharing their ongoing lessons learned with one another. Second, the participants have been able to show up in support for one another’s ongoing efforts in other ways — through encouragement, moral support, signal boosting, and, in at least one case, assistance in obtaining release from detention.

There is much to be gained through initiatives where women can convene to share knowledge, train, plan and develop solidarity networks for the struggles ahead. Creating women-led spaces that are informed by research helps build feminist momentum around the most pressing issues of our times. Click here to nominate a woman activist for the 2018 IGLI Summer Institute.

Our current political moment is profoundly troubling. Yet there are frequent signs of hope as people rally to resist racist and xenophobic rhetoric and counter restrictions on human rights. Grassroots, strategically nonviolent and inclusive people-power movements are necessary to counter these worrying trends. Devoting attention, time and resources to convene and train the leaders of these movements is a powerful way to intentionally invest in a more peaceful, equitable and progressive future.

As someone who grew up during the coldest years of the Cold War, I have always been aware that we are living on borrowed time. During the 1950s, nuclear bomb tests were broadcast live on TV. And I recall being traumatized by the 1959 film, “On the Beach,” which depicts the dystopian aftermath of nuclear war.

But the school air raid drills represented the most common reminders of the nuclear specter. When the siren sounded, we were expected to march out of our classrooms into the hallway, then kneel and put our heads against the lockers for a few minutes before the siren signaled that we could return to class. Supposedly this was to protect us from being incinerated during a nuclear attack. I realized this was a ridiculous exercise. Along with a few friends, I engaged in my first political act by refusing to participate in a drill early in my senior year. You can imagine that this did not sit well with the school administration. The principal gave us a stern lecture and threatened to punish us severely if we did so again. It was also my first lesson in the power of nonviolence: My high school conducted no more air raid drills that year.

At the time, Daniel Ellsberg was working as a consultant to the Pentagon on nuclear strategy. He says little about that work in “Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers,” which is among the most inspiring books I’ve ever read about civil disobedience. So, I was anxious to get my hands on his latest book, “The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear Planner,” to read what he has to say about nuclear war.

But I had some even more personal reasons for wanting to read Dan’s book. Last August, I was arrested with him and several dozen others at Lawrence Livermore Labs in California, where scientists create new devices to blow up the world. Our demonstration commemorated the 72nd anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Coincidentally, my grandson Rocky Barnes-Levering Ly was being born at the very time as we were being carted off to jail.

After reading Dan’s book, I knew that I had to give it to Rocky. Hopefully, no country will unleash its nuclear arsenal before he is able to read the book. That’s not a given, particularly considering the current nuclear bomb-waving threats emanating from Washington and Pyongyang. Trump threatened his counterpart in North Korea with “fire and fury the world has never seen before” the same week Rocky was born.

Assuming we escape a nuclear nightmare for the next two decades, Dan’s book can help Rocky comprehend the precariousness of our lives in the nuclear age. As a one-time insider and long-time student of nuclear strategy, Dan provides both a helpful overview coupled with lots of historical details.

I want Rocky to read “The Doomsday Machine” for yet another reason. I want him to develop an appreciation for why his grandfather has felt it necessary to commit civil disobedience several dozen times over the past half-century. Because I’m in my mid-seventies, I’m acutely aware that I may never be able to explain to Rocky why I tried to block the entrance to a government building the day he was born. Dan’s book does more than impart historical information and a critique of the entire nuclear madness. “The Doomsday Machine” offers a full-throated call for ordinary citizens to act to avert the catastrophe.

I wrote the following letter to Rocky that I inserted in the book along with a newspaper clipping of the civil disobedience action. After reading Dan’s book, Rocky may even find ways of joining the anti-nuclear movement himself.

—

Dear Rocky,

I’m giving you this book in the hopes that you will read it when you are a teenager. In the meantime, I hope that your father and mother — and all their friends — will read it now. The book tells a scary story. It talks about things that most of us would rather not think about.

But I think you’ll find the book inspiring. It’s written by a brave man — someone I hope you will consider as a model for your own life.

Like many truly brave people, Daniel Ellsberg does not consider himself one. In fact, throughout the book, he tells of many terrible things he did and many mistakes he made while working for the government. It takes courage to admit your errors and even more to try to correct them. He wrote this book in part to make amends for his misdeeds.

Dan was a teenager when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. He was horrified by the accounts of how tens of thousands of innocent Japanese civilians were incinerated in a matter of minutes and thousands more died in the weeks, months and years that followed.

He thought that he could help prevent atomic bombs from being exploded again. So he got a job from the late 1950s to early 1960s working as a high-level consultant to the Pentagon helping to develop our nation’s nuclear strategy.

This was the height of what was known as the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union (now Russia), which had a communist system of government. Dan considered himself a fervent “cold warrior,” someone who believed strongly that it was his duty as an American to engage in the fight against communism. He had earlier joined the Marines because of his strong beliefs.

At the time, both the United States and the Soviets had thousands of nuclear weapons, even though each side only needed approximately 50 to 100 nuclear bombs to annihilate all the cities, towns and people in the other country. Yet both built more and more bombs and missiles as rapidly as they could. Both countries were prepared to launch their weapons on a moment’s notice, and each side had what is called a “doomsday machine” that would automatically respond by unleashing their own nuclear arsenal.

While Dan was working for the government, American and Soviet scientists had figured out how to make bombs that were a thousand times more destructive than those that had obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Called thermonuclear bombs, one of these weapons could destroy everything within a 50-mile radius of the initial blast. That is, wipe out even the largest cities on earth.

With hundreds, let alone thousands of these nuclear explosions, the ensuing firestorms would pour millions of tons of smoke and soot into the stratosphere blanketing the earth, blocking most sunlight and lowering temperatures for at least a decade. This “nuclear winter” would eliminate all harvests, starving to death virtually every human being and animal that relies on vegetation to live.

I know it sounds crazy that anyone would help develop such weapons. It was — and is — insane. But Dan and everyone he worked with sincerely believed that having the ability to blow up the world made us safe. Hopefully things have changed by the time you read this. This idea, called nuclear deterrence, is still in effect today. It took years, however, for Dan to fully understand the madness of it all.

You may find Dan’s description of how he became disillusioned the best part of the book. I thought I knew a lot about our nuclear strategy, but many of Dan’s revelations were news to me — and I would suspect to virtually everyone else who reads the book.

Dan shatters the impression that only the president can launch nuclear missiles and bombs. Most people still believe this to be true. This idea has been reinforced over the years by the image of a “nuclear football” — a briefcase with the codes needed to start the war, carried by a military aide who accompanies the president wherever he goes.

But Dan discovered that the nuclear football is more public relations than reality. While Dan was working on nuclear strategy for the Pentagon, he went to a movie theater with a colleague to watch a newly released film called “Dr. Strangelove,” which was very popular at the time. It is a satirical black comedy subtitled “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.” In the film, a deranged U.S. Air Force general orders a first strike attack on the Soviet Union while the president and his advisors try desperately, and unsuccessfully, to stop a B-52 bomber from delivering its payload, triggering Soviet retaliation and a nuclear holocaust.

As he left the theater, Dan and his colleague agreed that the film was not fanciful but “essentially a documentary.” The film’s director had correctly guessed what Dan had learned from interviewing people within the military and top brass at the Pentagon: local commanders could launch nuclear weapons on their own, and there was no way of recalling them.

Dan didn’t just work on the theoretical planning and development of the nuclear strategy. He was at the Pentagon during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, and he tells the dramatic, inside story of what happened. I was in college then and was terrified — as was virtually everyone alive at the time. For two weeks, we all went to bed not sure whether we would be cremated in our sleep. When the crisis was over, we thought that rational minds had prevailed, that the leaders on both sides had averted the catastrophe.

Dan tells a very different tale. He found out that President Kennedy and his advisors were willing to risk nuclear suicide because of their concern for the next election. They feared that their political opponents would paint them as weak. Even worse, Dan learned that two days after the world believed the crisis was over, the U.S. navy almost provoked a Soviet submarine into firing a nuclear torpedo. Only a last-minute decision by the sub’s captain averted a nuclear holocaust.

How did we get to the point where nations are prepared to use weapons that can literally destroy all life on the planet? Dan’s willingness to confront the most difficult moral questions about nuclear war makes his book compelling reading.

To answer that question, Dan recounts the dismal history of how nations came to regard cities as legitimate military targets. It started with the use of airplanes during World War I. By the end of World War II, slaughtering innocent civilians had become normalized. Atomic weapons only made the killing process more efficient. As Air Force General Curtis LeMay put it, “we scorched and boiled and baked to death more people in Tokyo … than went up in vapor at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.” The moral distinction between killing combatants and noncombatants that had existed for millennia had been swept away.

I particularly want you to read the last part of the book because Dan believes it’s not too late for humanity to get out of the precarious predicament it has created for itself. He has a plan for change.

First, he hopes that this book will educate people about the problem. It’s only when people know the truth that they have any hope of changing the world.

Second, he calls on people within the government who have relevant information to become whistleblowers. That is, if government employees possess data on current estimates about potential casualties from nuclear war, they should share that information with the public.

Dan himself was a whistleblower during the Vietnam War. In 1971 he gave newspapers top secret documents called the Pentagon Papers that showed that the government had lied to the American public about the war. He risked spending the rest of his life in prison for his actions, but he did so anyway.

Fortunately, Dan did not have to go to jail because of the prosecution’s egregious conduct during the trial. Dan’s actions led to the downfall of one of the worst presidents in our history, Richard Nixon. Dan became a famous person for this action. Recently a major Hollywood studio produced a film called “The Post” that tells about Dan’s bravery in releasing the Pentagon Papers.

Finally, Dan hopes that informed citizens will create a movement that will force the government to change its nuclear policy. This, too, may involve some risks.

If you look inside the book, you will see a newspaper clipping that shows that Dan practices what he preaches. In the foreground of the accompanying photo, you’ll see Dan lying on the ground. Behind him you can see me (with a big hat) and your grandmother Carolyn. We are trying to dramatize what happened to the victims of the Nagasaki bombing. We’re blocking an entrance to the Lawrence Livermore Lab, where the government conducts research to develop new nuclear bombs. A few minutes after the picture was taken, the police ordered us to leave the area or be arrested. We refused to move. So about three dozen of us were arrested, handcuffed and driven to a holding area where we were photographed and fingerprinted before being released.

Just before the demonstration started that morning, your father sent me a text message from the hospital saying that your mother had just gone into labor with you. While we were in the paddy wagon being taken to jail, I told Dan and the others that Rocky, my first grandchild was about to be born. Everyone was, of course, delighted. We all believed that what we were doing was the least we could do to make it possible for you and others of your generation to live long and productive lives without the ominous specter of nuclear war that we have been living with.

You are entering a dangerous world. Hopefully you will be able to look back and see that Dan’s book helped put humanity on the right path. It’s not going to be easy. If you look at the last page, you’ll see that Dan quotes another man whom I hope will be inspirational in your life, Martin Luther King Jr.

“If we do not act,” King said, “we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight … Let us now begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful struggle for a new world.”

In 2017, the term “fake news” was used 365 percent more often than in 2016, earning the award for “Word of the Year” by the Collins Dictionary. Yet, fake news remains one of those highly politicized terms that gain popularity in the public discourse, while few agree on what it really means. Indeed, the term is often used to refer to both deliberately fabricated news and inaccurate or incorrect information, going beyond content that can be considered illegal according to the limitations placed upon freedom of expression in human rights law, such as propaganda for war and incitement to hostility and violence. In the public discourse, fake news is often a catch-all term, used to smear opposing points of view: Trump accuses well-established American media such as CNN of fabricating fake news about him, while his opponents blame fake news spread on social media, and possibly pushed by external powers, for his election victory.

They may all be correct to some extent. If we think of fake news as disinformation and misinformation, we could indeed start seeing it everywhere. We find it on social media platforms where sensational fake news is fabricated in order to gain political followers or, simply, to make money (like the Macedonian teenagers who made thousands of dollars by producing fake articles during the U.S. presidential campaign). But it can also be found on reputable traditional media, such as the widespread reports of weapons of mass destruction in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The discussions that saw the recent popularization of the term, however, often focus on how the internet and social media amplify the spreading of misinformation to larger audiences, giving anybody the means to impart information in the public sphere and favoring content that is quick and easy. Worryingly, with the development of new technologies and artificial intelligence, new challenges may lie ahead, such as video and audio manipulation.

Yet, presenting fake news as a new phenomenon is both incorrect and dangerous. It is incorrect because misinformation is nothing new, nor limited to social media. It is dangerous because, on the false premise of a new problem, governments are calling for new solutions to control the spreading of (mis)information and regulate content, proposing fixes that risk shrinking the space to challenge those in power. This is why it is crucial for people around the globe to understand the impact that current narratives on fake news and proposed solutions may have on their potential to be active and free citizens, in order to preserve the possibility of dissent and maintain a pluralistic and informative public sphere.

Content regulation as a mechanism of state control

In the words of Mahsa Alimardani, a researcher on technology and human rights in Iran at the Oxford Internet Institute and at Article 19, “the fake news discourse is … the greatest gift that President Trump has given to governments like the Iranian government … trying to control and manipulate how information flows within a country.” Indeed, cases of governments picking on fake news as the latest excuse to crackdown on dissenting voices are sadly flourishing in all corners of the globe. To mention a few, China has prohibited websites from “quoting from unnamed or fake news sources.” Egypt’s latestanti-terrorismlaw provides for a minimum fine of $25,000 (enough to shut down any independent media organization) for journalists accused of “false” reporting on terrorism-related issues. In preparation for the 2018 elections, Brazil is considering a bill to criminalize the sharing of false information on social media, and it has established a committee — the Consultative Council on Internet and Elections — to monitor fake news. As security forces are included in the committee, concerns abound from Brazilian activists that “the armed forces [will] monopolize control of the truth.”

But content regulation to fight fake news is concerning activists in what would be considered well-established democracies as well. For example, in June last year the German parliament voted for a bill to fine social media platforms that fail to remove illegal content within 24 hours, which can include hate speech and fake news. This triggered concerns over accidental and privatized censorship due to the short time-frame allowed for analysis of each case. Emmanuel Macron started 2018 by announcing that his government is developing rules to crack down on fake news, including the possibility for judges to block accounts.

Dunja Mijatovic, former OSCE representative on freedom of the media, is worried about these trends. In December, at the annual meeting of the Internet Governance Forum, she said, “There are more and more calls by political leaders around the world saying that they will fix fake news, so the society will be protected. Why should I trust any government agency or any search engine or any intermediary to tell me what is right and what is wrong? … I do not want anybody to filter my mind.”

Indeed, top-down approaches to fake news disregard the existence of propaganda and the fact that misinformation can be spread by governments themselves and used to advance their own interests. Letting governments control narratives can result in the homogenization of available information, which would be dangerous for democratic debate, and paradoxical if this was to occur in the name of protecting “truth” itself.

Regulatory efforts proposed by state authorities go hand-in-hand with pressure on platforms to take initiatives to tackle fake news and self-regulate. It was in the run-up to the French election that saw Macron elected, for example, that Google and Facebook teamed up with a variety of news organization to flag content regarded as false or misleading, a feature already introduced in the United States and recently modified to display “related articles” that provide alternative insights into a topic. Similar measures are being discussed in view of upcoming elections in Italy.

However, investing social media platforms, and thus private companies, with the task of managing content can be extremely problematic. Social media platforms have been criticized for their lack of transparency about the mechanisms and algorithms used to prioritize content, often influenced by the power of money and by a business model based on maximizing clicks for advertisement purposes. The arbitrariness of platforms’ decisions may go well beyond content prioritization, as was the case with Twitter’s suspension of the account of an Egyptian human rights activist and journalist, Wael Abbas, without any public explanation.

Another danger is that social media platforms can be co-opted by governments. For example, Facebook has been removing content published by Palestinian activists at the request of the Israeli government. This has created an asymmetrical social media sphere where hate speech and misinformation by some is removed, but not by others.

The ability of platforms to flag “disputed” content (which is different from illegal content that should be removed) may also lead the public to approach online information with a less critical attitude, as if critical thinking is possible to outsource.

It is perhaps critical thinking itself that is most deeply challenged by the fake news frenzy. In the words of Frank La Rue, a human rights lawyer and assistant director-general for communication and information at UNESCO, “fake news is a trap. Why? Because … they are trying to dissuade us from reading the news and thinking.” In other words, fake news narratives risk making citizens increasingly cynical about information in general, which could result in a sort of agnosticism to news and information. This could lead to public disengagement, a condition in which the powerful go unchallenged and collective action for the defense of citizens’ rights becomes harder to achieve.

Human Rights Watch Deputy Executive Director Iain Levine explained how fake news may not only be an excuse for authorities to silence dissent but also to avoid accountability. “Political leaders around the world have begun to use the label ‘fake news’ as a smear on fact-finding by journalists, human rights organizations, perhaps even prosecutors,” he wrote. “In doing so, they seek to break the link between evidence and culpability, making it more difficult to ensure those accountable pay for their misdeeds.”

Preserving the possibility of dissent and accountability

How then, can we resist this shift towards asymmetrical content control in the name of tackling fake news?

It is first of all necessary to recast the terms of the fake news debate. The concern over fake news can be a genuine one. For example, human rights activists in Europe and in the United States may worry about the fabrication of stories that portray migrants and refugees as criminals in order to spread hatred and fear. Yet, it is crucial that the same activists understand that the battle for information is both a battle against misinformation campaigns coming from all sides and one against proposed top-down fixes to the fake news problem, which would result in state control over what is publicly considered true and false.

A step in this direction was taken by more than 30 civil society organizations from across Latin America and the Caribbean who came together to write an open letter precisely critical of the fake news discourse. The letter was read at the closing session of the Internet Governance Forum — which brings together governments, the private sector and civil society to discuss anything related to digital policy. The letter’s aim was to protest the framing of the fake news debate, which they see as “empowering traditional media monopolies” and “opening space for surveillance, content manipulation and censorship” from platforms and governments.

However, it is crucial to bring this criticism out of a specialized context like the Internet Governance Forum and into the public discourse. Digital activists, who are directly engaged with online content policies, should build alliances with activists involved with other issues — as access to information and freedom of expression is at the basis of any type of collective action, both online and offline. It is through these collaborations that the elaboration of valid bottom-up solutions to misinformation can be conceived.

These may include continuing to promote independent fact-checking projects, as well as equipping the public with tools to support them in navigating the web. The Hypothesis Project, for example, uses open-source technology to allow users to annotate online content, so that isolated pieces of information can be linked to others, facilitating collaborative investigations and allowing the internet to be a web of linked information, rather than a trap of filter bubbles.

Platforms should also be held to account, but rather than trusting them with filtering content, it is necessary to demand more transparency on how content is prioritized or removed, so that citizens can become aware of the mechanisms that define which news will reach them. At the same time, censorship and surveillance should be resisted, by continuing the fight for encryption and internet anonymity to protect activists against repressive practices.

It is also vital to continue to challenge (state-sanctioned) narratives with full commitment to evidence-based reporting. According to Robert Trafford, researcher at Forensic Architecture, the current polarization in the public discourse over the veracity of news opens an opportunity to “explain to society as a whole why investigative reporting is valuable and a resource to be cherished.”

Forensic Architecture is an interdisciplinary team of researchers that investigate human rights violations in the context of urban conflict, where narratives can be particularly polarized. “There is this idea of state control of factual output and one of the things that is very powerful about Forensic Architecture’s work is that we are able to conduct counter-forensic work which reverts the gaze of state investigators,” Trafford said.

Forensic Architecture’s researchers do this by mixing innovation and rigorous academic method. They often use the proliferation of online visual materials — such as videos filmed by the communities affected by human rights violations — shared on social media as a valuable source of information. They then use such evidence to support the affected communities, grassroots groups and human rights activists in court trials. But they also work with journalists and create videos and exhibitions to make the stories that they unveil accessible to as wide a public as possible.

While Forensic Architecture’s investigations have faced attempts at obfuscation — and in certain instances have been called fake news — they may be less vulnerable to such discrediting precisely because of their rigorous approach to evidence.

“When I write on behalf of Forensic Architecture, I am able to do so with absolute confidence that the method of evidence creation is an academic one, and thus constantly reviewed with ethics and procedures,” Trafford said. “When we produce a report we give the credentials of everyone who is involved.”

The same kind of methodological transparency should be applied by any organizations involved in the fact checking of news.

Ultimately, the issue of the production, control and consumption of information is an extremely complex one. Thus, ensuring diverse information, as well as freedom of expression, is a task that requires many different approaches. Most activists seem to agree that if an antidote to fake news exists — within a truly democratic society where freedom of expression is respected — it will arrive through education and be based on critical thinking.

“Instead of pouring enormous amount of money into fixing fake news, governments should … give more to support education and the plurality of voices that we need if we want to live in democracy,” Mijatovic said. As governments may remain unlikely to do so spontaneously, it is up to organizers and citizens to make sure that this demand is heard loud and clear.

On December 13, six members of the University of Michigan’s Board of Regents shared a statement titled “United Against Hate,” showing their opposition to the current negotiations happening between the university and white nationalist Richard Spencer. After a disastrous appearance at the University of Florida at Gainesville, which saw mass actions by the No Nazis as UF coalition, Spencer had set his sites on the University of Michigan for his so-called “alt-right” recruitment.

Students reacted quickly, organizing walkouts and building occupations at the University of Michigan, Michigan State, and Eastern Michigan University, as well as satellite community colleges. Students 4 Justice, an organization formed in 2016 around ongoing issues of campus racism staged a walkout at the Ann Arbor campus on November 29.

The confederation of organizations took their inspiration from the growth of campus anti-fascist groups that have been taking on the appearance of alt-right figures like Spencer over the last year. Instead of waiting for Spencer’s appearance, students begin organizing once they learn that he is planning on coming to campus. This is the same impulse that has pushed towards the creation of ongoing organizations of students and faculty to deal with the ongoing pressure from alt-right organizations that see campuses as their prime recruiting ground. As 2018 begins, anti-fascist campus groups have exploded, changing the dynamic in universities to confront the kind of violence promised by the alt-right.

The making of a college-based anti-fascist network

Ever since 2015, when the Trump campaign emboldened white nationalist organizations under the alt-right banner, the movement’s figures and followers have targeted college campuses. College students are seen as upwardly mobile and are often from a different demographic background than traditional white nationalists. These organizations have also made targeting “progressive” areas a key part of their strategy, trying to provoke protesters for optics.

“Since a lot of these alt-right leaders are from the middle and upper classes, they relate to intellectual battles over street fights,” said Alexander Reid Ross, author of “Against the Fascist Creep” and researcher of far-right movements. “To turn the university into a site of struggle, they carefully cultivated an aesthetic and attitude that caters to an audience of middle-class students and faculty, who traditional fascist skinheads, Klansmen and Christian Patriot-types find it more difficult to reach.”

With the exception of historically black schools, universities are ideal settings for groups like Identity Europa, Vanguard America and the Traditionalist Workers Party to try and reshape the American consciousness. Since the arrival of alt-right groups, anti-fascist student activists have been turning ad hoc responses into lasting organizations ready for a response.

One of the emerging projects — the nationwide Campus Antifascist Network, or CAN — has expanded to quickly become the largest and most well represented of these groups on college campuses.

CAN was officially launched in August as student, staff and faculty activists began noticing that alt-right organizations were targeting universities amid a growing number of reports of racist harassment and hate violence on campuses. Working in tandem with the manufactured outrage of far-right media outlets like Breitbart, the trolling and harassment of students and faculty created the need for a national network of local chapters.

“It started because we had already been seeing a lot of hate speech on campuses, so we figured we needed some kind of a national group to address what we saw as a rise of this neo-fascism trying to worm itself into universities,” said Adam Miyashiro, a medieval literature professor at Stockton University, who sits on CAN’s steering and academic defense committees.

CAN now has more than a dozen chapters and more than 400 members in the United States. Chapters are popping up in Canada and the United Kingdom as well. With a horizontal structure that avoids hierarchical leadership, the model is intended to provide local chapters the autonomy to organize in their local region to the appearance of organized alt-right groups or threats of racist violence on campus. CAN has garnered the endorsement of a multiracial group of student and faculty groups and individual writers and educators, such as Junot Díaz, Steven Saliata, Farah Jasmine Griffin and Vijay Prashad.

Protesting Milo and ‘The Bell Curve’

At California State University, Fullerton, the October 30 appearance of former Breitbart provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos pushed that campus’ CAN chapter to have its first organized response — a counter action that brought together a coalition of student and political organizations. The goal was to set a precedent that white nationalist figures like Yiannopoulos would not appear on campus unopposed. CAN built a large coalition of student groups from across the spectrum, such as black and Latinx student unions. While Yiannopoulos spoke to a captive audience of both students and outside community supporters, CAN held activist workshops, set up tables with political literature and created networking opportunities for larger activist coordination.

While there were some physical clashes between Yiannopoulos supporters and counter-protesters, things went relatively smoothly at the CAN-organized event itself.

“[Yiannopoulos supporters were] picking arguments, disrupting tablings and pretending to be media,” recalled Clayton Plake, a Ph.D. candidate at Claremont Graduate University and a CAN organizer. “We are in the process of developing contacts, both with academic, activist and scholarly organizations that are all about empowering communities to stand up against the far-right threat and the state violence that comes along with it.”

At the University of Michigan, CAN activists took an even more confrontational approach when, on October 11, Charles Murray — author of the controversial book on race and IQ, “The Bell Curve” — began to speak. Critics have labeled Murray’s work as racist pseudo-science that is eugenic in nature. The CAN activists heckled Murray during his speech, and they projected the words “white supremacist” above him.

As the CAN network grows, organizers are also distributing organizing plans to “at-large” members in areas without a chapter so that they can easily respond to the alt-right groups recruiting or harassing students on campus.

“The threat is that they would go uncontested,” said Chris Vial, organizer with the University of Connecticut CAN chapter. “The danger of the alt-right presence or even just some kind of white nationalist group is that they politically organize and mobilize these kind of ‘casual acts of racism.'”

Putting Hatewatch on campus

The Southern Poverty Law Center, or SPLC, has a multi-decade history of targeting far-right groups through research and reporting, as well as community organizing and lawsuits. It has forced some of the largest white nationalist organizations in the country to close down, including the Aryan Nation, United Klans of America and the skinhead White Aryan Resistance. The group’s work has often been more journalistic and educational for state agencies. But in the last two years, in response to new campus-centered white nationalist associations, SPLC has built college chapters as well.

On October 30, the Columbia University chapter of the SPLC, along with coalition partners, including the Liberation Collective, held a march and rally in response to the appearance of far-right internet celebrity Mike Cernovich. Known for his virulent sexism, “America First” nationalism and conspiracy mongering, Cernovich was brought to Columbia’s Lerner Hall by the College Republicans for a speech.

“We don’t want white supremacy at our school or in the community it exists within. We want this school’s administration to know that [by allowing alt-right speakers] they’re playing games at the expense of black and brown lives and we will not be passive nor silent in this process,” said Jasmeen Nijjar, a social work graduate student and organizer with the SPLC campus chapter and the Liberation Collective.

At Cernovich’s event, anti-fascist activists lined people up to filibuster during the question-and-answer session, had protesters hold up signs during his talk and held an off-campus rally that marched through Harlem onto the campus. “Each action differs as it is based on the response and message we are trying to put out,” Nijjar said.

When Tommy Robinson, co-founder of the anti-immigrant English Defense League, gave a Skype lecture on October 10, members of the campus chapter of the SPLC organized a protest and shouted down his talk, rendering it inaudible. The Columbia administration took a harsh response to this activism, threatening 20 protesters with disciplinary action. Meanwhile, Nijjar and others were banned from Columbia University College Republicans events, though that was lifted after a couple of weeks.

On and off campus

While student and faculty-specific groups have a special stake in confronting white supremacy on campus, the broad-based anti-fascist movement also views the college terrain as uniquely critical. With alt-right groups making campuses their prime target, both to get a hip crowd of educated recruits and to try and reshape the institutions that set the country’s intellectual attitudes, many anti-fascist organizers are working to bring the larger movement back onto the campus as well.

The Virginia-based One People’s Project, founded by Daryle Lamont Jenkins, is one organization that has been campaigning around the public appearances of white nationalists for almost 20 years. The strategy he employs on campuses is two-fold, confronting the events as they happen by organizing counter-protests, and rooting out the figures on campus that are bringing white nationalists to campus.

“You can call out the Ann Coulters and the Milos all you want, but the fact of the matter is you have someone on campus who is giving them a platform,” Jenkins said. “Those people need to be called out effectively so they are not only not able to do that again, but they are going to have a hard way to go once they get out of college because everybody’s going to know what they’re about.”

The cultural shift in the alt-right made many young men who were radicalizing online believe that their participation came with few consequences. As the public revealing of personal information — a tactic known as “doxing” — against white nationalists expanded beyond just the core of anti-fascist organizing, it began hitting alt-right students especially hard. Those joining groups like Identity Europa in their college years are finding — upon graduation — that they limited their job potential, raising the social cost of participation while enrolled.

Some critics have said that doxing of alt-right activists leads to more dedication on their side, limits their “free speech” rights, and is an invasion of privacy. But by confronting those working to draw in new recruits at a vulnerable point in their early professional lives, doxing has proven to be one of the most effective anti-fascist tools for disrupting formal white nationalist organizations and shrinking the sphere of less committed supporters.

The organizers mobilizing against Richard Spencer’s speech at the University of Florida, Gainesville on October 19 — led in part by a coalition called No Nazis at UF — especially relied on the outside community, where many groups had been doing the work of tracking and confronting the far-right in the year since the election.

“The locals of the city were even more concerned because they didn’t want another Charlottesville happening,” pointed out No Nazis at UF organizer Omar Syed Muhammed. Organizations like Planned Parenthood and the Democratic Socialists of America lent support, including planning community events to make signs and showing their disappointment with the university administration’s decision.

Spencer’s attempts to recruit in Michigan sparked a mass student revolt, resulting in building occupations and student walkouts. Students 4 Justice were matched by organizations like Solidarity and Defense, an anti-fascist group that tied together the rise of alt-right groups on campus to the attacks on black churches in the region. As students returned to start their spring semester, the possibility of Spencer’s impending visit will hang heavy and act as inspiration for student groups that are quickly growing in response to his threat.

On January 18, Michigan State University finally gave the go-ahead to Spencer’s appearance despite the back and forth that has transpired for months. Spencer’s attorney, white nationalist activist Kyle Bristow, has promised to continue the lawsuits to force the alt-right’s way into campus venues, but in Michigan, and across the country, the number of anti-fascist campus groups promise to limit the scope that far-right appearances can have.

Rob Levin (back row, far right) and the Portland activists who joined him in circling the courthouse in December.

Rob Levin, a Quaker attorney in Portland, Maine, has been concerned about the growing climate crisis for years. Recently, he came to see that using nonviolent direct action could increase his effectiveness on the issue.

When President Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris climate agreement, an idea emerged among Levin and his fellow Portland Quakers: dramatize how the decision makes the United States a rogue nation. So, in December, they went to the courthouse and walked around it 195 times — once for each nation that agreed to reduce its carbon emissions. They then turned around, held up an American flag, and circled it in the opposite direction.

Levin then put the flag at half-mast and carried it onto the courthouse grounds, expressing his mourning for the U.S. decision. He knew this was breaking the law. He was briefly detained by police, then let go without arrest.

On reflection, Levin and the others realized that — even though the day’s action was highly meaningful to them personally, and the mass media coverage was good — its one-off nature would, in reality, not make a difference to policy.

Levin searched for something more likely to mobilize pressure on a perpetrator of the climate crisis. He discovered that Central Maine Power, or CMP, the largest electrical utility in the state, had for two years in a row lobbied against solar power — despite its public stand for renewables.

Maine Quakers formed a group to, as they put it, “shine the light” on the utility’s hypocritical practice. Thirty went to the Augusta, Maine, headquarters on January 27, despite the likelihood that they would be locked out of the building on a frigid day. In a parking lot just a hundred yards from the building, they met, shared signs and began to sing.

As they walked toward headquarters, they saw that security had set up a barrier in front of the entrance. They asked to speak with a CMP representative. Police issued the order to disperse. Instead, Levin and three others tried to enter and were arrested. The magistrate gave them unusually high bail ($200), set a March 19 court date and barred them from returning to the site. News reports were sympathetic, highlighting the alleged duplicity of Central Maine Power.

Meanwhile, the Maine legislature is considering a bill that would require Maine homeowners with solar panels to install a new meter forcing them to pay a fee for their own solar generation. Michael White, one of those arrested, said, “CMP comes up with these phony arguments saying that poor people are going to be hurt by rich people putting solar on their roof, which is a bunch of nonsense. Solar benefits everybody, and it lowers the rates for everybody.”

CMP has been lobbying for the bill, and a vote is expected within the next two weeks. The Quaker group is considering returning to the CMP headquarters and holding a prayer meeting inside the lobby — a tactic that several other Quaker groups have employed recently. Last March, Seattle Quakers and allied clergy held a prayer meeting inside a Chase Bank to expose its over $300 million in funds to the Bakken pipeline, which is strenuously opposed by the Sioux. Then, on January 30, the Philadelphia utility PECO called the police in response to a prayer circle of Quakers and allies in the Power Local Green Jobs Campaign. The campaign is demanding a massive increase in solar, generated by rooftop solar in high unemployment neighborhoods with a history of racist neglect.

Utilities and banks have been forced to make pro-climate changes by sustained grassroots campaigns. The first step, in each case, has been to do what the wily old strategist Mohandas Gandhi called “experiments with truth.”

Even getting the first step of truth-telling done, however, requires some time. Many institutions doing harm have built up a lot of legitimacy. Utilities are usually there for us when the ice and weather bring down the power lines or when extreme heat brings us close to brown-out, and it’s the larger grid that saves us. Our personal contacts can be with a utility’s helpful service workers.

In Philadelphia, I find that a favorite theater gets grants from a utility and a special ride in the children’s park is kept in shape with the help of grants from another. By associating their name with good causes, the utilities build goodwill; they appear to be good citizens. Like Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz,” we need to pull the curtain back, revealing the part of the show that’s not warm and fuzzy.

The good news is that it’s getting easier. Polls consistently show a large majority of Americans think that the United States is going in the wrong direction, and politicians’ ratings are in the toilet. When Maine activists reveal that Central Maine Power is in bed with the politicians, it does not reflect well on CMP.

Extreme weather is not only reported more frequently — people have their personal stories. The federal government spent $306 billion in responding to the aftermath of natural disasters in 2017. Who will pay for this?

These realities erode the credibility of a utility that is making money, ignoring scientists and acting like there’s no tomorrow. In Philly, we meet people newly learning that a utility gets its monopoly status, and guaranteed profitability, from the public that grants it a license — and the public can take it away!

The news only spreads, however, through repeated sharing: conversations, social media and, yes, a series of dramatic actions from prayer to civil disobedience. As Rob Levin discovered when he reflected on his Paris agreement action at the courthouse, what’s personally gratifying isn’t necessarily effective. What we found at Earth Quaker Action Team was that a campaign — a series of actions, escalated over time — combines both personal expression and the satisfaction of making an impact.